On Midlife, Contentment, and the Permission to Love the Life You Actually Have Last week a friend and I were sitting on the front porch taking in the flowers blooming in the circle, watching the bees and birds flit from one to the other. And she said, “I keep waiting to feel like I’ve arrived,…
One minute it was Memorial Day and the next it is almost back to school, two films worth watching, Victorian London done right and a woman who builds Scotland from cardboard. Summer seems to be flying by. One minute it was Memorial Day and the unofficial start to summer, and the next it is almost…
Three summer savory recipes, a few good books, and everything else on my mind this week. It’s Friday, friends, and it has been another busy week. We went from celebrating America’s 250th birthday to a week with the grandkids, another birthday, another reason to be completely happy and exhausted at the same time. It is…
Twelve books worth clearing your calendar for — new favorites, old friends, and everything in between Every June I make myself a small promise: this summer I will read slowly. I will savor. I will not stay up until midnight turning pages under the covers the way I did as a child during summer break….
Tender, citrus-bright, and still perfect on day three. The secret is sour cream. My mother has been looking for her mother’s poppyseed cake for years. Not a poppyseed cake. Her mother’s poppyseed cake, the specific one, the right one, the one that was made for decades and has not been exactly replicated since. She knows…
Making friends has never come easily to me. But somewhere in my fifties I stopped apologizing for a small circle and started celebrating what I actually have. Making friends has never come easily to me. Maybe it is because I am shy. Maybe it is because we moved every two years until I was thirteen…
A Fourth of July weekend full of family, fireworks, and a Cornwall novel I could not put down I was up before six every day this weekend, the way I always am, and the neighborhood completely quiet. That kind of quiet that only happens when everyone else has stayed up too late or it’s a…
A parade, a beach club, a sister’s barbecue, fireworks that take me straight back to childhood, and a full week of beautiful things to share Happy 4th of July, friends. America turns 250 today, and I think that is worth pausing over for a moment before we get to the fun parts. The first colonists…
Three savory recipes for the Fourth, three summer books, and a week that was equal parts wonder and worry. What a week. I am not sure where to start so I will start where I am sitting, which is at my desk looking out at the backyard, where there are baby bunnies doing nibbling at…
What I heard in your comments, and what I want to say back I did not expect what happened in the comments on Tuesday. I wrote about words. About the boy who called me Waddles the Duck when I was thirteen, and about the nail and the fence, and about how the holes stay even…
An easy patriotic cookie bar recipe with layers of Oreo crust, white chocolate chips, coconut, and M&M’s I have been making magic cookie bars for as long as I can remember. My grandmother called them Hello Dolly bars, and they were one of the first things I ever baked on my own. A buttery crust,…
Nails, Labels, and the Ones That Stayed I have been thinking a lot about words lately. Not big, important words. Not speeches or headlines. The small ones. The ones someone says to you on a Tuesday afternoon when you are thirteen years old, and you are still carrying them around in your body at fifty-nine….
