Adventures in Motherhood - The Durango Herald

Raising kids is wondrous, thank you for reading

It was 11 years ago – a baby affixed to my postpartum body and a toddler ricocheting off my person in search of random dogs’ mouths to investigate – that I dreamed up the idea to write this ...

DATE: Jan 26, 2019 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Kids declare themselves in so many different ways

It’s 7 a.m. and our bed has been filled with small visitors and their weaponized elbows for some time. The sun is just rising, except it’s snowing and everything has been transfo...

DATE: Nov 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

In mutual generosity, we can all thrive

It’s a Saturday morning, and I am thinking of nothing more than sipping coffee while the trees outside flare into deeper intensities of their autumnal selves. Later, there may be...

DATE: Oct 26, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Emotions are nothing to be afraid of

We arrive at our farm-stay by late afternoon. We’re going to stay on a farm, we’ve told the kids with the kind of enthusiasm that works on toddlers, or like we’re impersonating telemarketers...

DATE: Sep 21, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Sadness mixes with relief at summer’s end

August is closing out this spree of carefree summer days, of spontaneous plans welling up from the abyss of unstructured time; and the equal joy of having no plans, the kids sprawled about r...

DATE: Aug 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Stepping aside to let siblings build their relationship

The thought comes to me like a message from a burning bush, from someplace beyond my mind’s usual mundane chatter. Col is in Washington, D.C., with his grandma. Rose is inside re...

DATE: Jul 28, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

As fire burns, a reminder that we live in uncertainty

We’re gathered for dinner in our hot house, closed up as a barrier against the smoke that fills the Animas Valley by night, creeping down from the 416 Fire like an escaped thief as we sleep....

DATE: Jun 22, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Celebrating the good old days of right now

We are just entering the seasonal festival that is flowering trees. First fruit trees, now lilacs. I’ve been mesmerized from our upstairs windows, mesmerized on the ground, mesme...

DATE: May 25, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

The art and craft of making a successful request

It’s 8 p.m. on a weeknight, which means we should be ushering small people through the stations of winding down: read aloud, teeth-brushing, pajamas and, ultimately, the long, one-way march ...

DATE: Apr 28, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

When all voices are heard, the group wins

It’s Sunday, and I’m craving some family time, the magical kind where we’re all grateful to be together, feeling close and enjoying the same activity, which is precisely the one I have chose...

DATE: Mar 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Kids can see the impermanent nature of life

It’s Saturday morning, that day that tends to unspool in generous unboundedness, buffered as it is from any whiff of the work and school week. Except the kids woke up bickering a...

DATE: Feb 24, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood

Childhood doesn’t unfold along a linear path

Monday night, Dan and his buddies are gathered in the solarium for their biweekly “bow-night,” in which a group of guys, wielding metal rasps and sandpaper, craft primitive bows out of tree ...

DATE: Jan 27, 2018 | CATEGORY: Adventures in Motherhood