Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 19

The Shallows

[image error]It is August and the goldenrod is in bloom alongside the road.  Last night, I lay in bed, windows opened wide, and listened to the thrum of crickets, a symphonic prelude to summer's end.  I think back to all the things I was so sure I'd do this summer, to the private to-do list I wrote for myself the first week of June, and realize that I've made precious little progress on any of those projects.  What have I been doing all this time?   

The fact that I've managed to write a weekly blog...

Parents Day

[image error]You'd think I would be used to it by now, the simple fact that my children have grown up.  Yet time after time the bittersweet truth hits me again, in some new and unexpected way.  A memory surfaces, vivid and fresh as this morning's sunrise--Henry at twelve, wearing a too-big Hawaiin shirt and a pair of cool sunglasses, playing Steely Dan's "Time Out of Mind" on the piano; or Jack, fourteen and all intensity and focus, as he reaches down to turn up his amp for a guitar solo on "Autumn...

Logistics

[image error]I promised Henry that if he took a job working as a counselor and pianist at a remote music camp this summer, we would figure out some way to get him to the orthodontist every month.  This despite the fact that he has one day off a week, the day off happens to be Sunday, and we live three and a half hours away from  Sweden, Maine, where he is senior counselor to a cabin full of fourteen-year-old aspiring musicians. 

And the fact is, it did take a full sixteen hours to drive to Maine last...

Otherwise

[image error]We bike seven and a half miles up the road from our house, past rolling fields and silent, collapsing barns.  It is my favorite route from home, a long, lovely panorama of wild gardens,  moss-covered stone walls, old country houses set low to the ground, rolling fields and sun-dappled woods.  The morning air is patchy, stunningly hot in the clear stretches, deliciously cool in the greeny darkness of shade, the trees arching over the road like a canopy as we sail along beneath, single file...

Fireworks

[image error]I dug the fire pit out in our yard five years ago, the week we moved into the old red cottage on our New Hampshire hilltop. 

It was sweltering hot, and no one was happy. The tiny, uninsulated upstairs bedrooms were unbearable.   We plugged fans into every available 1923 wall outlet, then crossed our fingers and prayed we wouldn't blow out the ancient wiring.  But it didn't help; the effect was more convection oven than cross breeze.  

Desperation inspired us to have our first party in our new h...

Hello, good-bye

[image error]There were lots of ribbons and bows.  But it wasn't about the gifts.  It was about the pure, untrammeled beauty of a little girl celebrating her first birthday,  just waking up to the pleasures of pink party hats, presents to open, a spoonful of ice cream, a bite of cake.  We gathered round the living room, cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, neighbors and friends, snapping photos and marveling:  just a year ago, Angelique arrived in our midst; today she is an essential member of t...

Homecomings

 

 [image error]I've had the idea for a while now that these last few years have been all about change, and that my task has been to learn how to deal with it, how to make my peace with the many endings and beginnings that seem to be part and parcel of mid-life.    It's been years since we moved away from the neighborhood where Henry and Jack grew up. And although we've returned for visits with old friends and neighbors, our roots are elsewhere these days. Our boys, eleven and fourteen when they last...

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay

"You must feel so proud of yourself, to have written a book and had it published," a reader said last week.  I paused, fork in hand, not sure how to respond.  As the  speaker at an annual library fundraiser, I was surrounded that day by women who love books, avid readers all.  So I was touched by this woman's well-intentioned words. Good books enrich our lives.  To write one is, perhaps, a kind of offering.  But for me, pride is not an emotion that has ever been associated with being an...

Present Moment

[image error]They are home at last, both sons.  And I'm perched here at the kitchen table, for about two brief minutes before the potatoes boil (three men in the house--grilled steaks and mashed potatoes for dinner).  All afternoon, I thought there would be an hour or so to sit down and write my weekly blog post, but I'd forgotten how quickly a day flies by when there is no time to gaze out the window, daydreaming sentences.  I can tell already that the rhythms are going to be different around here this s...

Thirtieth Reunion

[image error]I suspect we all wanted to be Jill Ker Conway.  Or at least to grow up to be just like her, our much adored and admired college president.  Surely we listened, rapt, as she greeted the Smith College freshman class of 1980. Perhaps we wondered if perhaps just by being there, in her bright orbit for four years, we might somehow come to possess something of her grace and intellect, her clear sense of purpose, her quiet charisma.  It was not lost on anyone that she happened to look really great i...