the mingling of food, family, and life
My sixth-grader is hard on himself. When I sit down to help him with his homework, the first thing out of his mouth is, “I don’t know if I did it right.” When I start to read aloud a rough-draft essay of his, he’ll cry out, “Oh, stop reading. It’s total crap.” A few days [...]
You had been told that this would happen. This ever-increasing independence. The wings starting to flap. You’d read about it in books. You’d been told, many, many times by all the people who came before you but still, for you, you weren’t quite ready. No, you’re still back in preschool when she’d cry and call [...]
It’s 6:00 a.m., the radio is blaring but I’m not budging. Gone are the mornings when I gleefully arose, tiptoed downstairs through the dark house and pedaled my legs around the elliptical for a half hour like a gerbil in a habitrail while watching french films. This particular morning, I barely exert the energy to [...]
I had known about this trip for months. Five months to be exact. Five months to pack, go to the grocery store, make carpool arrangements, buy Birthday presents. Five months to figure out why the fan on my laptop runs continuously when I use it. But here it was t-minus three days and I had yet [...]
Yes, it’s true. “I’m a weeper. I weep.”(To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, The Holiday, which does indeed make me weep.)Just this morning I started weeping while making the kids’ lunches. One may have thought it was because if I have to make one more school lunch I may start weeping [...]
I sit here in the shadows just out of sight like my mother did before me. There but not there. Still needed but not seen.Watching you with your friends. Linking hands with these friends as you jump unabashedly into the water. Holding handstand competitions.Saddling up to these friends on the chair lift. Laughing and singing [...]
I had been forewarned about the hairpin turns but what I hadn’t been prepared for was the splendor of the canyon ablaze in reds and golds. The tiniest of the three of us had somehow managed to wedge herself in the “back” as we headed south in the cherry red sports car. The beauty of [...]
When the kind, sweet people at AM Northwest asked if they could film a cooking segment in my kitchen, my first thought was, “Oh no, now I really am going to have to clean out that pantry.” There’s not much you can’t find in my pantry. I like to keep my kitchen well-stocked with staples. [...]
The first word that comes to mind is scraggy. Well, that and bedhead. The four-year-old kind of bedhead where they’ve tried to smooth down the front of their hair with some water but left the tufts around the crown sticking straight up. Trying to appear stately but still rather rumpled. Besides that, I’ve never …
Carrie Minns, writer, photographer & mother of three, can be found sipping tea or sipping wine depending on how things are going herding & feeding the chickens here in the coop.
