A Little Update

It’s been awhile…It seems that after a year of posting (almost) every week, I needed a breather. But so much has been going on lately, I think it’s past time for an update.

We spent Easter week outside of Asheville, NC with Craig’s family, where we enjoyed hiking, cooking, and yarn-shopping. It was a peaceful week, with beautiful weather and my first experience of dogwoods in bloom.

I then had the great blessing of spending most of the first week of May in Honesdale, PA at a Highlights Foundation. Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard taught a workshop entitled “The Craft and Heart of Writing Poetry for Children.” I learned a ton, met amazing people (children’s writers and illustrators are the BEST) and enjoyed the wonderful food and beautiful landscape. Even the gloomy, rainy weather was welcome when I considered the hot, dry Louisiana I’d be returning to. (Of course we poets (!) called it “good writing weather” and carried on.)

One (unexpected) lesson from the workshop: Georgia spent the whole week addressing us as “poets,” and I felt a little giddy every time. It drove home for me just how important the words we use, and especially the words we use for each other, really are.

When I did return to the Louisiana heat, I was pleasantly surprised to find almost three pounds of green beans and a bowl full of blackberries waiting for me—it’s that time of year again! 

• 

• 

(I also found folded laundry and a remarkably clean house…my mother-in-law stayed with the kids, and she is wonderful.)

Another small triumph: an essay that I spent way too long writing and revising went up last month on the Dappled Things blog. If you have any interest in Dostoyevsky or Dorothy Day give it look: Reading Crime and Punishment with Dorothy Day Actually, even if you don’t have any interest in either, check it out anyway!

Isaac just turned eight, and May 14 is our anniversary– 17 years and still going!

Looking to the future, May and June will be filled with music and dance. Lucy has her violin recital next weekend, and then Samantha and Clare have their ballet recital the first weekend of June.

The week after the recital is Vacation Bible School, which does also include music, and usually something vaguely resembling dance. The big excitement there this year is that Lucy is volunteering with the snack ladies.

After VBS seems to be when our “real” summer begins, with some other camps, visits to Grandma, swimming and sprinklers, and laying in the air conditioning with a book to avoid Louisiana summer afternoons. And, if all goes well, I expect there will be more writing, art, and green beans.