Life Lately: Summer

We started our summer driving to the Rocky Mountains to be with many of our favorite people. But first, enjoying the drive through Iowa in June with her stunning, lush, green rolling hills. Nebraska hosted the largest, fluffiest, most vibrant white clouds and in them we found the backs of sitting ogres, a boy riding a winged dog, and other spectacular wonders. Lately, we have been cloud watching and looking up more than down. Meeting thirty friends for a hike at Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park: the friends who visited us in the hospital one day after the birth of our first child and sang in our living room “Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie in a way that still takes my breath away. The much younger friends who were still in college but befriended us early-30-year-olds and our very particular and shy daughter. The friends that became aunties and uncles. The friends who creatively gathered during the pandemic in empty Old Navy parking lots to have dinner together. Friends who brought the silliest, strangest games over to play every Saturday night. (Ahem, I'm looking at you Mysterium as my favorite). So many friends who have been so significant and so many who eventually moved away. It was beautiful to be with all of them again, in one place, cheering on my daughter who hiked in the snow to the top of the Emerald Lake in hot pink Converse. Friends taking the hand of my six-year-old son to cross the icy brook that weaved down the mountain. Lately, I am thankful for all the people who have made life so absolutely stunning and in a way I never could have imagined for myself.

I thought I would spend the summer evenings of 2024 painting and writing. Instead, I took a small detour and started a tiny new job requiring a significant lens shift and learning curve. Lately, I am immersed in podcasts and online continuing education classes studying the neurology of sensory systems, the science of play, and learning about neurodiversity affirming practices in my field from neurodivergent voices. I am trying to carry out what I am learning in a small therapy gym with fantastical play schemes that weave in all the imagination we can muster. I keep thinking back to the fact that play helps release dopamine which is a feel good hormone. When we are engaging in play AND learning new things, we are linking learning with feel good hormones. Why do we ever stop doing this? But then I think of how I am absorbing all this delicious information: over headphones while I am moving through the garden, on long walks in the evenings, during pilates videos in the early morning, on the drive home from a friend’s house, and by creating informational handouts on Canva (and making sure the pictures and font are also “just right”). My learning curve is starting to flatten and with these last few weeks of summer, I hope to find the space for painting and writing. But I can also say I had a lot of fun learning this summer too.

Do the Work

As with any relationship that extends over a period of time, you occasionally need to put in the work and reignite the love. I recognized that our love had faded three years ago and, with a little attention and weekly dates, I have been able to fall in love with Chicago all over again. Our friend Brandon once commented: "Nothing can replicate the layers of texture in Chicago." Now I see that extra historic and rugged beauty everywhere and it makes me smile a little extra. 
 

Abandoned Shopping Carts & Skeleton Keys

Ben and I bought a house in our favorite neighborhood in the fall of 2019. It was a tiny red cottage that could pass as a camp cabin in the north woods. Instead, it happened to be settled in a tiny urban art district of our city. Inside, the plaster walls were cracking and coming down in chunks. Several gas leaks were discovered upon inspection. Floor tiles chipped as our shoes passed over them and there was an eery feeling one might fall through the stairway if not careful. But there were also treasures: a framed black and white photograph of Ronald Regan in the dining room, a beautiful crystal doorknob, a front door with a skeleton key positioned in the keyhole, and a 1950s painting of a lone cowboy.

Ben and I are typically drawn to houses in serious need of love. We tour a curious house simply because it piques our interest and we wonder how bad the interior can be. Over the past six years we have placed bids on a handful of older homes in our city. Homes with giant oak and elm trees and floors that gloriously rock and groan. Homes hosting quirky, dreamy little rooms with floor to ceiling windows that could make the best art studio or cozy attic libraries with their slanted ceilings. I adored a home once owned by a painter who had no less than 200 big, beautiful oil paintings overlapping his expansive bookshelves. This artist had died several years before and the house, his books and busts, paintings and plants just sat. Entering his home was a museum- it was beautiful and also existential. We considered homes that were gutted and then abandoned with no record of what taxes would be because it had once been property of the adjoining synagogue. We tried so hard to buy the home that had a bathroom without walls but a guest house that my sister-in-law was ready to rent for her gyrotonic studio. We know the homes next to Kate’s parents with their deep, urban forest backyard. We wander the neglected overgrown gardens that you can tell were once abundant in roses and wildflowers. These homes carry stories that I love to try to see. All of these homes were just a touch too expensive for the work that needed to be done. All of them needed to be gutted and restored to their intended glory. We put in bids we could afford, we dreamed for two days while we were considered, and then let the dream go when someone had more cash. We try not to drive by these houses too often to see what could have been.

Fall of 2019, however, we found ourselves agreeing that the little red cabin could be a once in a lifetime opportunity and our offer was accepted. At the time of purchase, several families we loved lived one or two blocks away from this little piece of property. Lake Michigan, sweet friends, shops/ restaurants/ ice cream, an el stop, and a Metra stop were in walking distance. In February 2020, an architect stamped his approval on plans for a stunning restoration that Ben had drawn and designed for the house. We could starting building by summer. We imagined so many things that this new home would provide. Our kids would be able to walk one block to Sesame Street or cross the street to the twinkle lit front porches of their friend’s homes. Just before we turned the stamped plans in to the city, Ben and I spent a weekend in the Fulton River District for my birthday. While strolling through streets way too hip and young for the likes of us, I asked if we could pause for  a minute and really assess whether we had the sincere energy for another home project while also raising young kids. We could submit the plans in March 2020. No big deal.

I don’t think I have to spell out the uncertainty and chaos that mid-March 2020 brought. Our lives, the lives of people we loved dearly, and the places we frequented all turned inside out along with the rest of the world. I think of the science experiment where you add pepper flakes to a shallow bowl of water and then drop the tiniest bit of dish soap in the center of the bowl to break the water’s surface tension. The pepper flakes rapidly repel and spread out away from the soap epicenter. What used to be a collection of like-matter explodes, splits, and the collective is no longer. Part of my 2020 experience included a big, unwanted, drop of soap touching down on our sweet spaces and people.

Lately, I have big feelings anytime I hear or read anyone’s account of February, March, April, May of 2020. I believe this is a delayed counter effect of the emotional shut down many of us needed to do in order to move through that season of the pandemic. Thawing from that experience took more time than expected. I noticed the first hint of a thaw in 2023 when my kid’s favorite podcast had a tiny listener ask how they produced the show in April of 2020. This simple question and answer brought me so much unexpected grief. I realize that I am certainly not alone in this painful after-processing and that our losses were mild compared to those that experienced significant illness, death, neglect, abuse, and loss of careers. I imagine there are others out there who find themselves blissfully driving along an interstate when suddenly something on the radio just brings the flood of emotions.

Like everything else, our home-building dream turned inside out and warped. It took a few years to completely accept. We sold the little red house exactly a year ago. (Another time you can ask me about the overgrown yet communally protected memorial pine tree, the ice shed that traveled throughout Wisconsin in the beginning of the 20th century but was now rotting in the backyard (also communally protected), the price of lumber in 2021, the brief hope we had in Ron, the petrified body of a flying squirrel in the bathtub, and the abandoned Valli Grocery shopping cart (that Bailey and her mother saw first!) in the driveway that finally signaled this dream was dead.) I also have a really, really good realtor recommendation! 

This past fall I expand our search to upstate New York and Vermont just for fun. Ben zeroes in on Rhinebeck, New York after enjoying a delicious falafel sandwich in their downtown followed by a breathtaking mountain view of the Catskills this past August. But our families are here in Chicago-land and we know that this is the exact time to be with them. And once in a while friends decide to stay and buy buildings themselves and they become family. Things will be different when we are twelve years older but right now, this is where we love and are loved.

So here we are: unmoved from the small house we gutted/ continue to restore with Ben’s talent and our hands. We groan at the amount of work that is still ahead if we choose to stay here for another ten years. We should win a Nobel Peace Prize for the wildlife that we allow to live in our roof. I realize that it is such a gift to have a home but I question if it is dull to stay in one space for so many years when my social media is filled with world-schooling, sleepy oceanside towns, and so many friends who have relocated to the mountains or other fascinating cities. 

But as I cool down from a Saturday morning run, I find our playwright neighbor out in the front yard with her aging white cat. “He’s too blind to be out here alone anymore. We now come out here together so I can supervise. He mostly sits and talks to the fern,” she explains, pulling her sweater around her tiny frame because it is cooler than we expected. Indeed the cat is meowing at the lone fern. It is in moments like these that the mundane becomes magical. I have hundreds of these stories from this street that we didn’t plan to stay on for more than a few years. I share in these tiny moments of ordinary beauty, knowing that one day I will look back with nostalgia at this very chapter of my life and want to spend a few moments here again. Participating. 

Gut Punch

A tree swing hangs long and low
She listens to wheels spin
Out, around and around,
Dune buggies creating grooves
In the gravel road that circles the trees
Race car captain hearts
Dusty smile after smile
We haven’t heard them laugh that hard
In weeks?
In months?
In years?



Late-July Saturday with nowhere to be
The fridge has been stocked since Tuesday
Lounging on wide front porches
Taking turns with all types of automobiles
We are between significant departures
The second wave that followed the first
Unseen just right now, just like the last
We didn’t know then what we know now
Maybe we can cook together this fall, he said.
Dreaming of homemade empanadas & dumplings to share



My daughter swings beneath the tree minutes before-
Her legs stretch out toward the pond that absorbs
reflections of cumulus creations from above
Her toes clap
Bursting bubbles
In a picture, I catch our dispatched orbs
The ones we blew mercilessly into
the swing’s pendulum path



I joke with Antonio many months later
My pandemic toddler now believes
All vacations come equipped with
Miniature private islands hosting three-story tree houses
Airborn four wheelers
Fishing buddies and
Birthday cake for thirty



From the porch I record
a trail of children running
Backlit by a setting sun
My son second to youngest
Chasing ten paces behind
Right arm pumping as they cross
The narrow grass bar between dots of ponds
I love to watch them move across the property
Always running, always somewhere exciting to be


A tire swing hangs empty and quiet
He listens to the gravel that shouts
from between my teeth
embedded in my palms
Lateral ligament torn
Wheels- now horizontal- still spinning
As I count children, scanning the ponds
Looking for ripples of disruption
Finding none
We haven’t seen them run so far
In weeks?
In months?
In years.

Woodstock, NY

We arrive in Woodstock a few hours past sunset. Just in time for a spectacular Windshield Special Feature Show starring cascading snow flurries and dark mountain roads. Our headlights illuminate a vignette of tall bare trees and our car slowly follows a narrow snowy path that leads through them. It is a cinematic shot- horror or romantic comedy, I am uncertain which but I feel I might pass out from beauty. Happiness. Longing for more. The heavenly smell of pine trees, the familiar cadence of my niece's voice, and an excited wiggling pup greet us as we exit the car into a snow-covered forest. Inside the cabin, our family explores strange nooks, purple refrigerators, fourth-story observatories, and hot dog art while Rachel spoons out a chili that has been simmering and waiting for our evening arrival. Hours later, after others have arrived and the kids are in bed, Ben and I enjoy moments in a hot tub that also has been simmering and waiting for our arrival. Snowflakes melt on our bare shoulders, chrystals of coolness that perfectly offset the warmth of our bodies below the waterline. This celestial snowscape can spin my senses when I gaze up, a snow galaxy rushing toward our faces like a view I imagine from the captain’s chair of the Starship Enterprise. 

Fog covers the mountain and hovers over snow-packed earth the next morning. This delightful disorientation is welcome- to be briefly alone and have minimal bearings to location. The dog, my children, and my niece join me in this Catskill wonderland and we explore. A tiny brook still moves through its in-ground groove and my son throws snowballs that crack a fragile sheet of ice covering a connected pond. In the meadow we build a snowman, our voices echoing and then hushed by blankets of snow. We are hidden away in this fog and insulated by snow- the dog bounds in and out of our periphery with my daughter running behind her in rain boots. 

This scene continues for days- my daughter and the dog, my niece nearby, my son bouncing, throwing, and building- even as the November sun burns off the fog and begins to melt the snow in town. The view of the steaming Hudson River at sunset, the waterfall ravines and icy paths, the chess and checker games that my daughter delights in practicing with her cousins on Thanksgiving Day, the hike with the two Swedish expresso-colored labradoodles that bound and splash through the mud puddles ahead of our crew, the in-town bookshop and the street corner of a very old town where my son turns to us and announces his tooth is ready to fall out. And it does. Right there on our stroll. So I run back to my car to grab a tissue to stop the bleeding. We all share a delicious fig tart minutes later to celebrate lost teeth, beautiful places, being alive together, and a larger-than-life Connect Four game. Always the dog and my daughter dashing in and out of the fringe. (Except at the quick tour of the alpaca farm, for obvious reasons). 

But the moon. My father-in-law was the wanna-be-astronomer this year who suggested packing the telescope. I don’t think we fully understood the gift of the cabin’s tower until our final night- all windows, vaulted ceilings, and an elevation of four stories (surely significantly closer to the heavens than the meadow!). There is something extra momentous about having to climb a ladder and lift a heavy wooden hatch door in the ceiling to reach a telescope. We never would have seen the moon had the fog and the snow stayed- as much as I desired to stay insulated and unfindable. Almost too bright to look at, the full moon with all her elevated and depressed surfaces, like the gentle impact from bubbles popping on a thin layer of snow. Tectonic bleeps and bloops. I watch the silhouettes of my son and daughter, niece and nephew as they peek into the eyepiece of the telescope. My son's eyelashes press and bend against the lens- a boy's first mapping of stars and planets.

“It’s so bright!” They squint and momentarily look away from the enlarged pock-marked surface, pupils panicking and adjusting. But the moon is always there. As we fall asleep facing westward windows in New York and Chicago and wherever we find ourselves. Viewable, at some point, by every human being on this planet- the same moon, sometimes in different forms or brilliance. It is present beyond the fog and the snowstorms and dreary days. For me, a reminder of a bigger, even more beautiful, and complex existence. But for now the moon. Out of wonder or the need for counsel and comfort, we will always return our gaze and reposition to look outward again- lashes bending.

******

*Fun Resource: I loved listening to this New Yorker Poetry Podcast & Bianca Stone's poem "What's Poetry Like?" Listen here. 

** I read the book "Dog Years" by Mark Doty while on our trip and highlighted this beautiful snippet describing Doty walking with his two large dogs and how it anchored him after the death of his partner. I found this especially beautiful after spending an afternoon watching a group of Swedish men hike with their two giant Labradoodles. 

"Walking is an affirmation of physical life. We're in the world, we're breathing, we're together. I move in a straight line, more or less, along the paths, and sometimes the dogs are right in front of me or beside me, but more often, they are threading around the path, padding the woods or thickets or marsh on either side of me. I begin to conceive of us as one extended consciousness, reaching out in different directions, sensing, our bodies making a braided trail but our awareness overlapping. That helps, just now, when a self seems fragile, erasable. With the two of them, I'm joined  to something else, perception expanded, not just stuck there in the world in my own bereft, perishable, limited body." 

On Turning Ten

My daughter spends the last days of her single-digit-years kayaking among dreamy domes of vibrant lime green mountain moss in Vermont. Small citrus shades of tufts cling to rock and weathered wooden bridges, activating happy sensory circuits as our bare feet brush against their softness. Down by the pond, my daughter wades into its bank, mud squishing to form a fleeting footstep. She spends hours scouting for the tiniest toads and crawfish with her dad and brother. 

I find a reading nook between the pond and a delicious babbling brook. I enjoy how the color schemes of my stack of books blend so beautifully with those limelight green and earthy browns. Solitude gives me a moment to notice how the pond reflects pine trees and the enormous, cumulus clouds so vividly that it almost tips my reality upside-down. Sun sparkles dance on the floor of this magical space as an afternoon breeze settles in. 

I wish I could stir all these happy ingredients into a lotion that I can reapply daily for the rest of my life. Or package this particular color wheel into a tube of paint so I can spread it across a canvas when hard days arrive. Instead, I absorb this moment through all my senses and tenderly tuck it deep into my brain matter as the precious tiny gift that it is. Just as I have been doing these past ten years with my daughter, whose hair used to turn translucent in the sunlight.

People love to tell new mothers that childhood goes by in a blink of an eye. I always nod, knowingly. Growing up, my parents called me "Little Busia". Little Grandma. I have always been keenly aware of the bittersweet passing of time. The only remedy I know is to find occasional moments to slow down and soak in life's moments as best as I am able. I appreciated Albert Lee’s words of wisdom that he shared with Ben after the birth of our daughter. “Each stage is so unique and you think you will be devastated when she grows out of it until you realize the next stage is pretty awesome too.” 

We arrive the next day in Boston and, after a rather competitive game of family Uno in the public garden, my daughter turns ten. Standing in Brittany’s apartment in the South End neighborhood, she confesses she feels sad to say goodbye to nine. Brittany, who is just as close in age to my daughter as she is to mine, nods empathetically. “Nine is a great prime number.” My daughter sighs and they share a moment of sadness together. There are sheets of rain pouring onto the streets of Boston when my husband invites our daughter to walk to the nearest coffee and donut shop for a mini birthday date. I remember how vulnerable my heart felt when I first held this baby girl. I thought I had endured big heartbreak before but never had I experienced the sheer amount of power that one little human being could command on whether or not my heart stayed unified or not. For the rest of my life. If there is any comfort in loving someone so deeply, it is knowing that someone else in this world loves her just as much. 

We head to the ocean with Brittany when the date is done- Sandwich, Barnstable, Provincetown. The words “Hey Brittany!” become the anthem of the weekend as our five-year-old son begs for her attention. There are late-night walk-up ice cream counters and carryout dinners sitting beside a tumultuous Atlantic ocean. On a calmer day, Brittany, my daughter, and I spend hours wading through entire seaside ecosystems and tidepools. My son experiences the ocean tides for the first time, jumping, leaping, getting mouthfuls of salt water, sputtering, and spitting. 

I have been dreaming of getting in our car and driving to the ocean since April 2020. It is only fitting that Brittany is here. Brittany, who spent so many years in our living room watching my daughter learn to speak, read, and wonder aloud. Brittany, who bought my daughter women in science t-shirts featuring Madame Curie and Mae Jemison. Who gifted kids books on Quantum Physics, folktales from around the world, and (my favorite) roadkill science. Brittany who ate her dinners of noodles while we met weekly if not multiple times weekly on Zoom throughout March-April-May 2020. When summer 2020 came it was Brittany laying down her blanket in our backyard, on the beach, Garden Park, Wicker Park and joining us for socially distanced dinners where I shared my strong desire to drive to the ocean. Brittany who supplied the families in our bible study with no less than 150 free Covid test kits. Brittany who loves our family so faithfully.

Our east coast travels conclude in the Hudson Valley. On a Sunday evening, we wave goodbye to Brittany as her ferry departs from Provincetown for Boston. On a Monday we are in the Catskills, meeting our niece Mayerli in front of her dorm room. Resourceful, spirited, beautiful, twenty years young- she immediately wraps her arms around her cousins. She arrived early to school for cross-country practice and in this mostly empty building we share our opinions on her dorm furniture and choosing the best dorm room according to capacity for sunlight. She is vibrant in this new home and we laugh as she explains the multiple colorful band-aids patched over her knees. Apparently, her dorm keycard isn’t working and she has to crawl through her dorm window every time she wishes to enter the building. I take a video of her setting up a chair she has hidden in the bushes and then of her hoisting herself up through the lead glass windows. I send it to her mother who will also laugh and groan.

In this moment I gain brief clarity about what I can dream for my daughter over the next ten years. These are the years to build stamina, grit, creative problem-solving, and faithfulness. To continue encouraging wonder and exploration. To provide more invitations to walk to a coffee shop in the rain in new cities, spend more time wading through mud and tidepools in the name of curiousity, read more fairytales, advocate for what you need (maybe it is sunlight!), board ferries that pull us away from the familiar, and teach how to climb in through windows when the door isn’t an option (metaphorically and literally). We wave goodbye to Mayerli the same way we waved to Brittany: knowing that she is thriving in the process of growing.

** Fun Resource: Storybook House on Wright Mountain, Vermont

Allagash White

I remember her barefoot with the squishiest legs 

Dangling over the pier

Toes barely touching the water

My smallest love, sitting there in the quiet of a sleepy town in September 

Middle of Maine

Middle of the week 

Lakeside, mountainside

In a video I capture her production of language- all cheeks & cadence-

She is noticing the pier that moves

Up and Down on the gentle laps of water

“It's like the people,” she says

And begins to sing

The people on the bus go up and down

She turns to look at me

Light pink glasses framing a devoted gaze

Two square chiclet front teeth 

Freshly three years old

I revisit this video over and over

The way her voice sounds when she says “people” 

I tell every new mother to take all the videos

Catch that tiny voice

The way each word is so intentionally strung together

Syllables pronounced with definition

Sentence structure concrete and singular 

like every word is sliding a counter on a abacus

I sometimes live in these Maine moments

Morning Kayaks 

Mist on the water, feet splashing

Collecting fallen birch bark on the steep trail 

leading us from the house to the pier

Miss Rumphius by the fireplace

Allagash White in the evenings 

The darkness of night when we tried to convince her to gaze upward

Searching out for stars 

Grasping for glory

She refused

Because she was three

Years later there is June

Two-year-old daughter of a friend

Her voice is all cheeks & cadence 

Every word so articulate and intentionally expressed 

I hold her on my hip and I watch her 

cheeks inflate as she narrates

The actions of her older sister, my daughter, 

And a miniature horse named Miss Mouse

There is no lake but just a stream of sudsy hose water

That trickles past my feet as I snuggle 

Happy that I can live 

in my memory of the middle of Maine right here

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* Picture Hancock, Maine September 2016 

** Actual pier sat in Rangely, Maine

*** Fun resource: Allagash is a Maine brewery and Allagash White continues to be one of my favorite drinks because of this very week 

Better than Sesame Street

Sense of place is often my favorite part of a story. I love it when the setting of a story becomes its own character. For example, I don’t remember much about the movie Mulholland Drive but I do remember loving the city lights of Los Angeles and how the city became a strange, breathing, living thing that kept me unsettled but also transfixed.  Or the book Heaven’s Coast by poet Mark Doty which highlights Boston and Provincetown as major characters both in heartbreak and healing. Or anytime Jhumpa Lahiri places a short story in Boston or the bible refers to "the wilderness". And what would Gilmore Girls be without the main star, Stars Hollow?

In my own life, I think of my middle school connection with a forest preserve where our cross-country team would practice in autumn. I can still feel the clickiness of my Walkman as I started my mixtape and the way the machine popped in my hand when the tape ended abruptly. I still find comfort when I recall sitting in my dear friend’s papasan chair in her first apartment located in Lincoln Park and the way she loved to cook something from the recipe book of Dr Andrew Weil while I read the trilogy of Griffin and Sabine from her library. I can visualize the layout of so many people’s homes, the direction of light that came from different lamps and windows, the smells, the way I feel the barometric pressure either drop or rise when I enter, the texture of their rugs or furniture. The kitchen chairs that were covered in fabric at my childhood friend’s home- the ones that spun around so fast and we would sit with Hostess cupcakes and spin and spin. 

My husband’s parents own a three-flat that I call Sesame Street. At a very special time, two sets of our friends rented out two of their flats. There was an evening that Ben and I dropped by with our three-year-old daughter to visit. We found his parents hanging out on the front porch steps and we began chatting there. Suddenly, a window from the second story was tossed open and Brady joined in the conversation, his upper body hanging out the window for a better view. The couple in the garden apartment opened their front door letting their three-year-old daughter dash out to join mine on a tiny patch of grass. Bailey & Kevin leaned against the brick exterior and we all chatted in these casual spaces until the cicadas started to sing. It was a moment that I knew made my soul so joyful but was not going to last forever. My job was simply to savor. The theatrical positioning of our bodies reminded me of a 1980s Sesame Street scene. Hence, the name Sesame Street continued. 

There was also a fun season in Ben and my life where we hosted a small group for our church every Monday evening. I worked a ten-hour shift on Mondays in that same season and would often arrive home to greet my husband and two-year-old daughter along with twenty to thirty people who were already settling into my living room. This sounds exhausting when I write it out now but we loved providing a space to congregate for Northwestern students, young couples and families, and anyone willing to join the chaos. I enjoyed coming home and hearing the distinct voices of people I cherished. Our six years of hosting ended quite suddenly with the pandemic but one evening, over Zoom, our friend Josh confessed that he missed our kitchen and could vividly imagine the overhead lighting and how it made him feel so cozy in our home. This made my heart sing: someone else carried the sense of place that our home provided.

As with all things in life, nothing stays the same. Half the battle in life is recognizing that a place of comfort or beauty or the people within those spaces can be fleeting. It is only then that you can take a moment to be thankful for and savor it. In an instant, places can be torn away, burned down, left behind, overtaken, lost, vacated, or taken from us. Lake Michigan water levels rose significantly in the spring and summer of 2020. Ben and I were taking a drive as we often did during the early pandemic and we saw our favorite beaches were completely covered in water. It was as if they never existed. We can carry treasured places in our memories and hearts if we allow them the space. What a privilege having a home or welcome space can be, especially when there are so many displaced people and unsafe spaces. When your town, city, or country itself is in turmoil. My brain is wired to constantly be aware that this happens every day and could happen to anyone, anywhere. But this is also when I lean on the belief that what lies here on earth is not my final home. I appreciated a quote from Author Jen Pollock who writes, “In the beginning of time, God made a home for his people and at the end of time God will make a home for us.” She goes on to point out that our first home was in a garden, and our last home will be in a city. Better than Sesame Street.

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* Postcards by Bob Eckstein found from The Wasteshed

** Fun resource: YOU! I would love to hear what your favorite space is :)