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Posts Tagged ‘authenticity’

Making a Difference

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 27, 2023| 17 Comments »


            for my daughter
 
 
She is the hero of this story,
not because she killed an enemy
or fought a beast or traveled
to a distant snowy and hostile land.
She is the hero because she stayed,
which is sometimes the hardest thing to do.
She is the hero because she is kind.
Because she cries in the movie
when the letter from a dead man
arrives to talk about love.
Because every day she finds ways to laugh.
She is the hero because she holds my hand.
Because she teases me with no mercy
and knows all my flaws
and still tells me she loves me.
Because sometimes she’s scared.
Because she wakes every morning
and shows up for the day,
even though she hates mornings,
though she has seen unspeakable things,
she wakes up, opens her hands,
her heart, her eyes, her ears,
and lets life fill her.
And the next day,
she does it again.

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Last Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 8, 2023| 7 Comments »


            for Lorrie Gardner
 
 
She was weeping that day,
the last day I saw her.
She stepped out of the shadow
into the late October sun,
and she held me on the sidewalk.
And I held her, too.
And we cried.
How many times
had we sat in the soft light
of her classroom
and laughed about things
the students had said?
We planned parties and
field trips and poetry lessons.
We spoke about goals for my children
and goals for ourselves
and kids losing teeth and
ways to teach vocabulary.
We spoke of divorce
and dance, jitters and singing,
ski technique and running
and feeling displaced.
On that last day I saw her,
I don’t remember what we said.
But I remember the open look of her face—
the way she didn’t try to hide her grief,
the way she didn’t try to avoid mine.
Of course we didn’t know then
it would be the last time.
Perhaps a younger version of me
would judge the memory,
would wish we had been smiling,
but I am so grateful to remember
the truth of that moment:
her broken open heart,
my broken open heart,
our arms around each other
with love so fierce, so soft.

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One Present

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

no ribbons, no bows,

no fancy wrapping, no box—

you, the very gift

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