Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 22

Good-byes

The house is so quiet.  I had planned to spend the afternoon putting Christmas decorations away, vacuuming the dog hair and grit from the floor, stripping sheets off the kids' beds, the guest-room bed, the pull-out couch.  (We had a full house here last night.)  But I know that when I get up from my spot at the kichen table and begin all those tasks, it will mean that the holiday we've had together really is over.  When I went to bed last night, around 11:30, Henry and a couple of high...

Giving

Every month, my neighbor Debbie brings me her copy of "Yoga Journal" after she's read it.  This small gesture is one of so many kindnesses that Debbie extends to me that, I'm embarrassed to admit, sometimes I don't even remember to say "thank you."  

Among other things, Debbie entertains our dog Gracie for a few hours a day, fills our bird feeder when it's empty, waters my houseplants when I go away, sweeps our garage, brings me inspiring quotes to read and a still-warm croissant from the...

Snow Day

First snow.  And Gracie and I were the first ones in the woods this afternoon, breaking the trail.  I was sweating in my jacket in no time, heart pounding as I trudged up the path.  It felt good to have my snowshoes on again, and pretty sobering to realize how out of shape I am.  I stood still for a moment, caught my breath, quieted the thoughts racing through my head.  All morning I'd answered e-mails, talked on the phone, enjoyed the pleasure of hearing from old friends who took the time...

Scatter darkness

If you're lucky, life affords you a few moments when you feel as if you are exactly where you are meant to be, doing exactly what you are meant to be doing. Once in a while, such a moment coincides with one of your children having that very same experience, at the very same time.  So it was yesterday afternoon, as the lights dimmed for the final St. Olaf Christmas Festival concert of this year.  My husband and I had flown from New Hampshire to Minnesota for this Sunday afternoon performance. ...

Thanksgiving

"Thanksgiving is really over," my friend Patti wrote yesterday.  "All that's left are yams."  I know what she means.  In our house, it's a Tupperware container a third full of broth-less turkey soup, which no one really wants to face again. 

When I was growing up, my parents put on Thanksgiving dinner for the whole extended family.  My mother would pull out her spiral-bound Thanksgiving notebook a week in advance, and begin making lists and trying to pin down numbers.  Thanksgiving for thirty ...

Dinner out

The year my mom turned sixty, my dad had the bright idea to whisk her off to a dental conference to celebrate.  My mother, who never asks for much of anything, was, to say the least, underwhelmed.  She'd thought he was planning a surprise for the big 6-0; a night in Baltimore wasn't what she had in mind.  So my brother and I leapt in at the eleventh hour and took her out for a leisurely dinner at a very nice restaurant, just the three of us. My dad got the point pretty fast and to this day I ...

Coyotes

If you live in the country, you know the sound: the high, frantic yipping and yowling of coyotes working themselves into a frenzy around a kill.  Last night, the yelps jolted me out of a sound sleep, heart pounding. Gracie already had her nose to the open bedroom window, on high alert.  Steve, wide awake too, took my hand, and we listened in tense silence as the wild dogs went at it, the unearthly, piercing calls rising and falling and rising again in the field just below our house.  Later...

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If you live in the country, you know the sound.  The high, frantic yipping and yowling of coyotes working themselves into a frenzy around a kill.  Last night, the yelps jolted me out of a sound sleep, heart pounding. Gracie already had her nose to the open bedroom window, on high alert.  Steve, wide awake too, took my hand, and we listened in tense silence as the wild dogs went at it, the eerie, piercing calls rising and falling and rising again in the field just below our house.  Later...

Seventeen

My baby turned seventeen yesterday.  Of course, he hasn't been a baby for a very long time, and yet, because he is my youngest, I can't help but think of him that way.  Even now.  Even though he is six feet tall, doing math that is far beyond my comprehension, and creating a life in which he is increasingly, and appropriately, independent.  Sometimes it's hard for me to know exactly where my sphere of influence ends these days, when to speak up, when to be quiet and remember that it's time ...

A time for silence (and a recipe)

Before my son Henry flew back to Minnesota last week, I took him out shopping for vitamins.  Last winter, temperatures on his campus routinely dipped below zero; by the time he came home for Christmas break he'd had a nasty cold for two weeks.

 Like every other parent of a child who's living in a dormitory this flu season, I'm worried, and determined to do all the immune-system building that my sons will allow.  By the time I'd bought everything on my list of must-have supplements, vitamins...