Author – The Durango Herald

The art and craft of making a successful request

It’s 8 p.m. on a weeknight, which means we should be ushering small people through the stations of winding down: read aloud, teeth-brushing, pajamas and, ultimately, the long, one-way march ...

DATE: Apr 28, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

When all voices are heard, the group wins

It’s Sunday, and I’m craving some family time, the magical kind where we’re all grateful to be together, feeling close and enjoying the same activity, which is precisely the one I have chose...

DATE: Mar 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Kids can see the impermanent nature of life

It’s Saturday morning, that day that tends to unspool in generous unboundedness, buffered as it is from any whiff of the work and school week. Except the kids woke up bickering a...

DATE: Feb 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Childhood doesn’t unfold along a linear path

Monday night, Dan and his buddies are gathered in the solarium for their biweekly “bow-night,” in which a group of guys, wielding metal rasps and sandpaper, craft primitive bows out of tree ...

DATE: Jan 27, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Sometimes, being heard and understood is all you need

Rosie and I are leaving the Christmas Farmers Market, our bags plump with beets, potatoes and carrots. A raven croaks from a nearby rooftop, eager to be the beneficiary of holiday crumbs. ...

DATE: Dec 23, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

The complicated roles parents play in their kids’ lives

We’re in Grand Junction on an immaculately green, mega soccer-field complex hemmed in by coffee-colored hills. Rose’s team is warming up, which is an elaborate ritual consisting ...

DATE: Nov 25, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

As seasons change, life is good here

Everything is happening with reassuring predictability. The house finches have staged a coup at our bird feeders, numbers swelling after the exotic summer vacationers have fled. ...

DATE: Oct 28, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

As they grow, holding on to the threads of connection

It’s a puzzle of a Tuesday evening. Rose has soccer practice at a time that was once reserved for family dinner; she needs to be shuttled to and from the soccer field; Col has a friend stayi...

DATE: Sep 23, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Parent love kids with a unique intensity

We are at the Rec Center park, Dan and I facilitating games for a group of Col and Rose’s friends. The Colorado sun pours from the cloudless sky and barefoot children run through the grass, ...

DATE: Aug 25, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

When emotions rise, try giving them a name

We are at 10,100 feet. The sky hangs heavy. The distant mountains, like an art lesson in shading, are veiled in deepening obscurations of gray. Lightning roams faraway peaks. Dan and I excha...

DATE: Jul 21, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Clutching bows and simple pleasures in the woods

In our family’s archery cosmology, there are many ways to make a good shot. Your arrow can fly straight and smooth, loosed from the runway of your fingers like a bird fleeing a c...

DATE: Jun 23, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Our questions are a passport to the world

Rose and I are out doing errands, bustling in and out of the car with lists and bags, my mind clamped on things to remember like mantras that could derail my life if I lose the thread. ...

DATE: May 26, 2017 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood