As if there is nothing more important to do,
Mom and I play cards. For hours, we shuffle
and deal and keep score. We scowl. We gloat.
We shuffle and deal again. A portrait of my great
great grandmother looks down at us. She is
a round-faced German woman with thin oval
spectacles. Her eyes somehow smile, though
her lips do not. I want to invite her to join us,
this woman who raised on her own a daughter,
this woman whose choices equal the reason
my mother and I are here at all in a small room
in northwestern Georgia playing cards and laughing
and letting the game do its work, which is play,
which is an essential way two people become closer
despite distance, despite difference, which is,
of course, the most important work of all.
In a hundred fifty years, I hope there’s a photo
of my mother and me in some other room
where my great great grandchild is playing
cards with her mother. I hope the look on my face
says, bless you, family, for playing together.
There is nothing right now more important to do.
Posts Tagged ‘play’
Reunion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cards, daughter, family, generations, mother, play, portrait on October 17, 2026| 1 Comment »
Seven in the Lake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, childhood, death, lake, play, swimming on October 6, 2026| 4 Comments »
after Jim Harrison, “Seven in the Woods”
Yesterday, I was seven, swimming
in the lake. Thin prickly seaweed strands
winding around my legs. I would do anything
not to touch the silty bottom. Bullheads
lived there with their slimy dark skin
and strange thick whiskers. On the surface,
I was sleek and playful, baring my skin
to Wisconsin sunshine, splashing
and being splashed by my brother,
crawling through waves with wild joy,
my arms slicing through green water,
my strokes strong and quick.
Almost fifty years later, I feel it,
the welcoming warmth at the lake’s surface,
the cooler layers deeper below.
I remember the simple pleasure
of the dead man’s float,
a seven-year-old girl playing with how to die.
What did I know of death then,
except that it meant to hold my breath,
to let my body be held, a game,
really, just another way to play,
like Marco Polo, like racing to the raft.
The stakes feel so much higher, now.
Death not a friend, exactly, but
a companion nonetheless.
I channel her back, that seven year old,
remember her fear of the depths.
The bottom’s not so bad, I want to tell her.
You can be playful with death, she giggles back.
One Peekaboo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moon, play on July 23, 2026| 4 Comments »
hoping it finds me
hiding in the shadow of the blue spruce
that glorious half-moon
Playing with the Wild Child
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterfly, play on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
Beckett doesn’t want to play butterfly anymore.
He wants to play band. He wants us to wear
our green plastic glasses with bright lights
that flash on the rims. He wants us to sing
about trains. And train tracks. And more train tracks.
Beckett names our two-person band the Sing Bells.
We have three greatest hits. All three feature
me on tambourine and vocals, Beckett
on kazoo and a small brass bell. I want
to make another song about books. Nope,
says Beckett. More train tracks. I think
of butterfly wings. How even the lightest
touch can damage the scales. How
one way to honor what is wild is by
letting it exist exactly as it is.
So the Sing Bells create another song
about train tracks that go all the way
to Beckett’s house. In his smile, I see
wings unfurling. When he leaps
off his stage for dinner, I swear I see him fly.
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, generosity, goodness, kindness, ping pong, play, role model, transformation on March 16, 2025| 9 Comments »
for Erin
Anyone can see she’s a beautiful woman, but god,
she has never been more beautiful to me than when
I brought my great nephews to the loft of her barn
and she picked up a red ping pong paddle and let
the small, fretful boy across the old green table make up
the rules for the game. And every time he’d change the rules—
assigning points for hitting the ball over the exposed beams
of the barn or points for hitting the ball into narrow window frames—
no matter the rules he contrived, she would shrug and say yes
and laugh and let the ball be forever in play. There was sunshine
in her voice when she praised him, pure radiance
in the way she squealed as the ball ricocheted
in the rafters, honest incandescence in her smile.
This is how generosity and goodness survive—
they’re passed on one brief interaction at a time.
When the boys and I left that dusty, sacred space,
fully covered in dust and hay, I swear we, too, were luminous.
Amidst the Cold of Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, darkness, family, ice, light, memory, play, river, winter on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.
Ready for It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, music, play, Taylor Swift, walking on May 1, 2024| 7 Comments »
“Mom, what’s the title of this song,”
she asks me. I listen to the lyrics
for cues. Luckily, Taylor Swift starts to croon
in her mezzo voice, part velvet, part thorn,
“You’re on Your Own Kid.” And I shout
out the title. Vivian smirks,
knowing I was rescued by the song.
“Album?” she says. “Red?” I guess.
“Wrong,” she says. “Evermore?”
I guess. “Wrong.” “Midnights?” “Yes.”
She nods in mock exasperation
it took me so long.
She loves it when I get it wrong
in her endless quiz of popular songs.
She loves that she can teach me.
I love it, too, that she shares with me
these lyrics that grow her, shape her.
We walk along the river trail,
one white air pod in her ear,
one white air pod in mine
and the river braids by and the next song
begins to play. “Title?” she asks,
and I listen for clues until Taylor
demands in a gravelly rush
“Are You Ready for It?” And I look
at my daughter, just fifteen
and becoming so wholly herself.
As much as I want to stop
in this moment with her hand brushing mine
and the musky scent of river
and sunshine warm on our skin
and I think yeah, I’m ready for it,
though it brings me to tears, yes I am.
Tobogganing with My Teenage Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, play, slow, snow, speed, time, winter on February 24, 2023| 7 Comments »
Perhaps I wish for something dangerous—
a rush, a breakneck ride, a snow-drunk risk.
Instead, my daughter and I slide the toboggan
down the drive with a languid, slow-motion
sluggishness. And we laugh as we urge
the wooden sled forward, creeping
down the hill. After a few laps, the run
is fast enough we can build a small jump
at the bottom, but it’s more of a bump
than a launch. What is it in the heart
that loves a surge, a swell of excitement,
a dance with danger? Why is it fun
to be out of control when the stakes are low?
Oh, my girl and I know, we know what it’s like
when the stakes are high. No wonder
we laugh as we slide at the pace of a stroll.
We know what it’s like to be out of control.
We know. I hold her by the waist as we barely move.
And part of me longs for speed. And part of me
is grateful to move in a way that lets me hold her
a little bit, even just a few seconds, longer.
Once Upon a Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, daughter, mother, play on November 17, 2022| 7 Comments »
In the living room after dinner, my daughter
plays Tchaikovsky on Alexa
and dances every character in Sleeping Beauty—
Aurora, the prince, the evil fairy,
the lilac fairy, the bluebird, the jewels—
she leaps and lifts, she jumps
and twirls and raises her arms
with a delicate twist of each wrist.
She is more wing than limb,
more song than blood,
more frolic than bone.
To watch her is holy business
as she learns to make each step beautiful.
The Autumn Morning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, hawk, play, wings on September 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
Perhaps a red-tailed hawk
calls to you through closed windows,
and curious, you leave your work
and step out into the morning.
The air smells of rain and autumn leaves,
and the hawk makes wide circles above the yard
as if showing you how it’s done—
this is how you play with the day.
Everything glitters as the sun emerges.
Everything, even your thoughts.
Even your greatest loss.
The hawk disappears up canyon.
You breathe as if you’ve just remembered how.
When you go back in, you’re careful to fold in your wings.
Relearning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged play, proverb, relearning on June 3, 2022| 8 Comments »
When the going gets tough, it’s just started.
A bite’s always worse than a bark.
It’s darkest before it gets darker,
Absence makes the heart.
Speak softly and carry a life rope.
Out of sight, in the prayers.
Good things come to those who love.
All that glitters is meant to be shared.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way to be tested.
Get a taste of your own disaster.
The squeaky wheel is also a song.
Loss is the art of being mastered.
No Way to Anchor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, play, time on May 11, 2022| 6 Comments »
While our bodies curl
into each other on the couch,
Vivian grabs my resting hand
and begins to smack it
into my chin.
Why are you hitting yourself?
she asks as my limp hand
repeatedly hits my jaw.
Why are you hitting yourself?
And we’re laughing and
I squirm and squeak
and she grins as she keeps up
her one-line interrogation.
I want to hold this giggling moment,
want to linger here
where the truth
that we hurt ourselves
becomes play,
where the trust
that we will do our best
to not hurt each other
runs deep, deep as the current
that drags this moment
with it through time,
even as I squeal Stop,
knowing how it goes on.
Unlikely Inspiration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged algae, play, thrive on February 5, 2022| 3 Comments »
We used to play with the scum
in the river’s slack water for hours—
sat there with our sticks pulling up
thick green layers from the water,
flinging it against the rocks where it stuck.
A simple game, perfect for a four-year-old boy
and his mother. Scoop and thwack,
scoop and thwack. Joy in the act.
Not once did I consider
the resilience of algae. How it floats free.
Not once did I admire how, despite its lack
of roots or stems or leaves, it still harvests sunlight,
still brings green and oxygen to the world.
Now, feeling rootless, feeling stemless, feeling bare,
I think of that algae, how it thrives.
Walking Past the Mud Puddle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dirt, friendship, lotus, mud, play on February 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »
for Michelle
Today I feel too clean to play,
but oh there was that day
when you and I
walked past the mud puddle,
all slick and ooze, a miresome mess,
and we reached our fingers into the sludge
and smeared the muck
onto each other’s faces—
thick mud, gray mud, slippery
and unctuous mud,
wide swaths of heavy mud
that slashed our cheeks,
bedecked our foreheads, mocked
our love of spotlessness.
Not war paint, but joy paint,
cool liquid earth on our skin.
Besmudged and besmirched,
we baptized each other
in the dirtiest of water,
a murky blessing,
our laughter blossoming
between us in the air,
a many-petalled prayer,
a jubilant lotus
startlingly (how?) so pure.
Eat More Slush Mush
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breakfast, Christmas, family, play, slush mush, tradition on December 25, 2020| 1 Comment »
The first year I won the Slush Mush contest
I was shocked as my grandfather read a long, official letter
to everyone else around the Christmas tree
about how my entry into the Slush Mush Breakfast Cereal contest
had been the best one received that year.
I didn’t remember entering.
In fact, I was sure I had not.
Yet I won a puzzle.
Another year my brother won.
Or my mother. Or my cousin.
And each Christmas morning, my grandfather read
the long official letter
which always ended “Eat more Slush Mush.”
It was many years before I understood
how the contest worked.
And for the last twenty years
since he’s been gone,
I carry on, buying puzzles, writing letters,
appointing unsuspecting winners.
Part of me thrills in this annual ruse
because it reminds me of him.
Part of me thrills in remembering
how strange and wonderful it felt
to be chosen not because of how hard
I had tried, but because I was part
of a circle of love. It’s a malnourished world,
he would write every year. Thank you, Papa,
for the Slush Mush.
Building the Snow People
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged home, play, snowmen on November 27, 2020| 4 Comments »
We rolled them out of backyard snow.
How quickly snow balls the size of a heart
become snow boulders the size of a man.
We gave them features
to make them more like us.
Dark brown stems and leaves of dried mint?
Those became hair. Carrots for noses,
of course. Small gray rocks for eyes.
Plus knobby sticks. Rust-colored leaves.
Thin icicles from the eaves.
The wail of a siren going by—
that went into them, too.
Plus a prayer for those in pain.
And a slip of blue Colorado sky.
We walked among them,
these rare guests in a time of quarantine,
and perhaps we felt our loneliness lift.
What is a snow man but a temporary cairn,
a dolled up trail marker that leads us
back to ourselves, back to our own backyard.
Wrestled by Chaos
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, chaos, lucky to be alive, play on November 4, 2020| 1 Comment »
This grave day when it seems
I cannot play, I do.
I go to the graveyard and find
someone who died on my birthday.
I sit at the small metal marker
and read poems about birth and death.
I sing “Another One Bites the Dust”
and dance in my bare feet.
And when the dog starts to scratch at the earth
and flings dirt all over my legs and lap,
I laugh at her great idea
and rub the dirt into my skin,
then cover myself in big handfuls of red dirt,
marking myself as dust.
Here, in the autumn sun
surrounded by tombstones
that have long since lost their names,
it’s so easy to remember
how short this life—
what a gift to be alive,
what a gift to be wrestled by chaos
and find myself still thirsty
for another day, another day.
Inner Menagerie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged animals, inner life, play on October 3, 2020| 3 Comments »
In me, there is a mountain lion
who prowls the streets of town
with her powerful legs and fierce teeth.
She’s the one who smiles at everyone,
and why shouldn’t she?
But inside the big cat is a gopher
who knows best how to hide,
who is grateful no one seems
to have noticed her.
And inside the gopher is an elephant
who has been watching her mother
and grandmothers, aunts and cousins,
for centuries to learn from them
how to survive.
But inside the elephant is a sea squirt
who, attached to one spot,
has begun to eat her own brain
so she won’t have to use it anymore.
And inside the sea squirt is an otter.
She wonders how the rest of them have forgotten
the great joy of running and sliding
on their stomachs, playing tag and chase,
rolling in the water, feeling the sun
warm and generous on their backs.