altared spaces

darkness and light

December 19, 2011
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Welcome guest author Lindsey of A Design So Vast! In the last few years I have grown more aware of, and more intimate with, the powerful relationship I have with both light and dark, but the truth is it’s a theme that has run through my whole life. There’s no better example of this than [...]

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what do you tell your kids about santa?

December 8, 2011
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I have never had the talk with my children about Santa. This is because I never wanted to let myself overhear that bit of news. I grew up in a home where I wasn’t allowed to believe. Jesus was the reason for the season and Santa was merely a distraction. But then we had huge [...]

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counting down to connect at christmas time

December 1, 2011
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I smelled my mother 3 years after she died while I was standing in the grocery store. Heaven’s Scent walked right past me while I was deciding between Cheerios and Kix. I abandoned the cereal and stalked followed that aroma for 3 aisles, inhaling all the while. I pretended to look at ketchup and coffee. When [...]

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altaring my mother and daughter

September 26, 2011
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            Today is my mother’s birthday. She died more than a dozen years ago. But I can clearly hear her gasp over this stone which looks to me like petrified wood. Isn’t that fascinating? In my imagination she is ever present.             My mother loved petrified wood. I don’t even know why, I just remember [...]

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hanging procrastination

September 21, 2011
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          This bag has been hanging here for 3 months easily. It is full of things that want to be given away. There’s a couple books that want to go to my kids’ school library, a print that I know will be appreciated by Hospice and a few other odds and ends. But the deal [...]

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diamonds, dirt and empty spaces

September 4, 2011
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           My husband and I were in the airport, listening to the boarding blather, “We’d like to welcome our gold guests to cross our red carpet.” We continued to stand where we were and snickered. Our turn to board the plane would come after the beautiful people.            “The diamond customers may now board the plane.” [...]

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the power of paradox

July 29, 2011
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          There is juxtaposition in every nature trip I’ve taken. The more grand and vast the scenery around me and the smaller I become by comparison, the more aligned I feel with my essential self. It seems an oxymoron that the more insignificant I feel, the more whole I become.           Staring through blades of [...]

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alaska’s alsek river

July 3, 2011
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“Sometimes not writing is  a writing exercise.” -Margaret Reyes Dempsey I haven’t been writing much, and that is my altared space today. I’ve been doing those things writers do: living the details so I can write about them later and understand my life. Just now I am preparing for a trip down the Alsek River in [...]

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a mother’s evolution

June 9, 2011
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I used to be angry I was the Wicked Witch with an elastic waistband Yelling about cereal bowls left under the couch. I saw hurt eyes And a cowering head that hung in shame.   Now I am gentler. I am Jacques Cousteau in mom jeans Swimming behind a camera capturing the perfume of socks plunked. [...]

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my last peanutbutter sandwich

May 21, 2011
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          This week I made the last official peanutbutter and jelly sandwich of my daughter’s childhood. My kiddo is no longer a girl. She’s a co-ed and she’s off to college.           I have made her a peanutbutter sandwich almost every day that she has gone to school for 12 years. My girl likes routine. [...]

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tripping over idiosyncrasy

May 16, 2011
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          My daughter just spent 5 days touring the east coast with her father, my husband. They were looking at colleges and she was sharing a hotel room with him. “Doesn’t his snoring bother you, Mom?” she asked when she returned.           My answer surprised me. One of those surprises that married life brings. Sharing [...]

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