by Jennifer | Jul 8, 2020 | guest posts, marriage, reflections
Sometimes you meet someone—even virtually—who feels like a friend from the start. I had the joy of writing a guest post for Betsy Pendergrass of gatheringaround.com. Betsy and her husband, Taylor, have cultivated a beautiful site focused on hospitality and...
by Jennifer | Jun 21, 2020 | reflections
I had the blessing of my father in my life until I was 14, just about to enter 10th grade. That summer he suffered a sudden fatal heart attack. I’ve now lived many more years without than with him, but recently I’ve been writing down memories of life with...
by Jennifer | Jun 10, 2020 | guest posts, reflections
Recently I had the privilege of writing a short piece for Abigail Rehmert, a writer I met through hope*writers. That post came at a crucial time, when quarantine had been under way for weeks stretching into months, our business had dropped off drastically, and I was...
by Jennifer | Jun 3, 2020 | poems, reflections
As the daughter of an Asian father and a German–American mother, I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like to be a black adult in the U.S. today, to live with the possibility of being presumed guilty until proven innocent, or to instruct my teenage sons...
by Jennifer | May 21, 2020 | books
Laura Ingalls Wilder was the first writer I ever befriended. At night, our beautiful, young mothers tucked us both into bed, side by side with our older sisters. As I listened to my mother read Little House in the Big Woods, Laura would listen to her pa on his fiddle....
by Jennifer | May 4, 2020 | a mom's life, poems
I wrote this poem five years ago and reworked it recently. Now, of course, we all know that four weeks is nothing. It’s not even half the time we’ve been social distancing. So take this poem with a grain of salt. I didn’t know any better. Four weeks...
by Jennifer | May 2, 2020 | a mom's life, education, poems
She sits at the kitchen table dutifully diagramming sentences inscrutable indirect objects and those pesky prepositions (or are they adverbs?) But I am diagramming the way the light glints in her hair as she carefully shapes cursive,brow furrowedbut eyes darting...
by Jennifer | Apr 23, 2020 | a mom's life, exploring, philosophy of boys
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. (William Wordsworth) English majors are always looking for poetry in the everyday, and an idyllic walk in the woods is bound to provide some romantic fodder for their next poem. Our family walk began promisingly...
by Jennifer | Apr 4, 2020 | a mom's life, exploring, fun
Spencer and Gigi have been plunging into the woods every day this week, looking for adventure. They come back smelling of the outdoors, cheeks rosy, eyes alight. Today after breakfast, we all joined them. Cool air and gray skies made for perfect hiking weather. Even...
by Jennifer | Apr 2, 2020 | a mom's life
For the past four years, I’ve been writing blog posts in my head and sometimes in my laptop. But I never actually put them online because of all the usual excuses writers have (fear, time, inertia, overactive internal editor). So this tiny post is my baby step...
