Seattle Mamas

Like a good addict, she puts off quitting until tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, she promises with hands crossed that tomorrow will definitely be the day. If we go out to eat, she stashes one in her pocket. Just. In. Case, she says with quiet, guilty breath. She’s got one hidden in the secret hole by [...]

Here’s an early elementary memory: I’m seated at my desk all but hugging my construction paper decoupaged tissue box. I’ve spent hours on it, even picked the largest box I could find in my house, stuffing the unused tissues behind my red plaid couch.  In my class of twenty five, I shake three tiny envelopes [...]

Around here, snow comes slow and seldom. For a few days a year life stalls with a thick blanket tucked in at our island’s shoreline. It interrupts routines and creates new ones, like sledding and icicle collecting.  But as the snow first began to fall, I panicked about how it would affect my newest routine: [...]

Why?  Mama, why?  But it’s older than me and we’ve had it for so long!  Why? In the damp grey cold of an early Sunday evening, hours before the year’s first full moon shone through thick, grey-flannel clouds, we walked to the movies.  Early with an hour to spare, we waited in line for the [...]

As I breastfed our babies for five collectively-awesome years, I never stopped dreaming of a night alone in a hotel. I wanted to pack for myself, and I didn’t want to set a breast pump atop Gideon’s Bible. For Mother’s Day, my sweet hubby got me a gift certificate to a local hotel. He said, trashy [...]

Last month I bit off more than I could chew.  It was a bit like stuffing a watermelon into a pocket designed for dimes, nickles in the front of a Vintage pair of Levis. Knee deep in bumblebee wings from costume designing Fall’s Community Family Theatre’s play, I thought of Henry David Thoreau fleeing to [...]

With a daughter buoyant on age seven’s cusp, my heart holds her in a sling still, my eyes blink to behold her tall, lean, beautiful.  I’ll never get over how amazing it is to have a whimsical little girl version of my husband. Sometimes when I’m braiding her long hair, laughing at her jokes about [...]

Some days are like this: unattended tasks stack like prairie grass without a clearing in sight. Or, like songs on iPod’s shuffle where I never know which one to skip. Songs have always been defined by their driveability.  Neil Young still gets air time, but his lyrics rarely get my full attention. Half a lifetime [...]

I love yard sales, baking pies with grandma’s apron all a-hug on hips, long flannel nightgowns and a warm mug of hot chocolate at midnight, tiny marshmallows afloat.  I love station wagons from the 1950s, historic diners with a malt done right and the sound of music from my Victor Phonograph.  And I totally agree [...]

My eldest daughters compliment each other like a happily married couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary.  When one can no longer walk, be they too tired or weary from growing pains, the other swoops up to offer piggy back’s ride or wagon’s pull.  When one can not sleep, be they too restless or scared from [...]