Category: parenting
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Spartans
are Spartans, bright and strong. You cannot mute our warrior song. When one of us falls, we fall as one. Then we rise together, never undone.
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U2
We are coming up on a year without my dad. My heart feels heavy, so I’ve been listening to U2’s Joshua Tree a lot. I have such a vivid memory of getting tickets via a phone call to Ticketmaster to the original Joshua Tree tour which stopped at Pontiac Silverdome. I was the last in…
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To My Dad, Nearly One Year After His Last Birthday
Note: I wrote and read this to my dad on his birthday nearly a year ago. He passed away in February. I would give anything to read it to him again this year. As I looked out the window this morning at the flecks of white gliding down gently, I thought of a not-so-gentle snow,…
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Skating
When I am on skates, I feel invincible. It is me, wheels, movement, and music. Everything else just fades away. It started when I was seven. I lived on skates in the summer and was a rink rat during the winter. I discovered it was the perfect thing for Midwesterners to do all four to…
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Quit
I have so many reasons to quit writing. I have people depending on me. I love my job, the people, and I want to keep growing. I want to keep growing my children and my marriage, too. My waistline is growing, and I want to exercise more. I can’t wish more hours into a day.…
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Season
My team member, as he left the office today for the last time, headed for his new career adventure, told me we had a good season together. It made me happy, but it also challenged my notion of a season. I live in Michigan to fully experience the four seasons of nature. I get howthose…
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Band
Next to a field of wildflowers, under the last of the summer moons, we hosted a bonfire for my son’s marching band. As diverse as those flowers, the musicians gathered around a volleyball net and played, laughed, and lived fully in this moment of youth. I remembered my son, little and indignant. He was quiet,…
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Mom
Mom, mom, MOM, moooooommmmmm, I hear amidst the din of Saturday Costco shoppers. I’m hiding in the dairy, an old milk maid soothing a hot flash. They want to spend my money on twenty pounds of salty snacks that will go stale like my mood this insufferable July afternoon. Mom, mmmmmmmmmmom, m-O-m. How did that…
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Lost
As I swim through grief over losing my father in February, I am also processing the concept of loss itself. My father is not really lost. I know where he is and is not. I will never hear his voice on the phone again. He won’t be physically present at family events. He won’t be…
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The Novel Pitch
Here is what I am working on this morning over a coffee flight. Elizabeth Benet Grey, named after her mother’s favorite Jane Austen character, finds herself tumbling into the trials of middle age with the unfulfilled dream of writing a great American novel. As her life starts to unravel, she convinces a trendy new bookshop…
Kelly Rogers 