Okay – now hail the week that seemed like a rising mountain. From Endymion in my front yard to a birthday party of five year olds in my back yard, this has been a week. I woke Saturday morning with a fever and a headache and Tin said, “Are you not going to come to my birthday party?” I looked at him through the slit I was making with the covers over my head and…
Today is Tin’s fifth birthday. He woke and repeated what he had told me last night, “I will turn five in my heart.” Today is another day for me to celebrate being his mother. It rained all day yesterday so his trampoline is a little soggy and it is still cold outside, but it is warming up and soon we’ll be jumping away in the back yard. Photo by Marc Pagani A woman’s life is…
Yesterday, Endymion, one of the largest parades rolled down a block away from our house. There is always a sense of excitement anticipating a Carnival parade here in New Orleans, but Endymion is no ordinary parade – it’s a super krewe with a large following. When I first moved into the Spirit House I instantly missed the front porch of the LaLa and kept thinking of how I was going to have a porch built…
My 15-year-old friend boldly sent a letter to her crush and said simply, “I have a crush on you.” The response was awkward – “We’re cool.” I told her, you cut through the ambiguity – you’re brave – if he remains ambiguous, that’s him. Do you. I went to a wedding last night – a man was marrying his dream bride – he wore black and she wore white. I had hoped to dance, instead…
This morning as I was counting, ONE [pause] TWO [pause] for Tin to come brush his teeth and let me pick his hair, I was in mother mode and when he came running before I got to THREE [thank you 1 2 3 Magic] I took a deep breath and began putting the creme in his hair. I muttered under my breath, “Your hair is getting long.” And then I said, “Is my hair getting…
I love Mardi Gras – don’t get me wrong – but the crowds, the traffic, and the hassle do wear thin at times. So enter ‘tit Rex, a parade with micro floats (read: larger than a bread box but still small) that a serious krewe put together a few years ago and you have instant fun. It feels like old time Mardi Gras where there are kids playing in the grass and you can hear…
Our friends’ second mother and nanny passed yesterday. She took Tin under her wing when we first arrived in Zahara de los Atunes almost five years ago. Her love of children was self-evident in the way she spoiled him and he adored her. Every summer for four years, we’d walk down the narrow street calling “Tata, Tata” as we approached her open window. She’d have the cookies ready – Galletas Maria – and she would…
I’ve stumbled upon the word “authenticity” lately in more ways than I would care to count and I started wondering how authentic has become the buzzword for 2014. In an age where we are posting our daily doldrums and peccadilloes for everyone to see, who is going to be the one to judge authenticity? We went from email to blogs to social media causing babel to explode and truth to tell, I’d be hard pressed…
Faced with the impossible task of getting the number of calls I needed to complete two reports, I came within a mouse’s breath of doing just that mid morning. I also had to deal with a gift card that didn’t show up and the never ending saga of ADP having double paid me thereby wrecking havoc on two check accounts – but a simple phone call on each yielded a loving, sympathetic person on the…
Well, this is the year I turn 55 and Tin turns 5 — five has a vibrant meaning in the world of numbers and myth – it’s dynamic and constantly changing and it is represented in many areas of spirituality. The are five books of the Torah, there are five-pointed stars, and in numerology, five is molded from an equal mix of masculine and feminine while it bends more to the feminine. My motto for…