Sarah Rise Weekly Updates

After driving to Detroit for some Detroit-style pizza at Grandma Bob’s and some pancakes the size of dinner plates at the Hudson cafe, we flew to Seattle to be ready for the 1p36 conference. This was the first year we arrived the day before the conference started, and it was glorious to be so relaxed… Read more »

One night at bedtime, Sarah said, “I love you, Granddad in spirit.” I responded, “I love you, Sarah in the flesh.” That tickled her funny bone and has become the theme for the week. She often tells me, “I love you, mom in the flesh.” Speaking of bedtime, I successfully shifted to sleeping on a… Read more »

A week ago, Sarah and I dropped Amy off for an hour of kitten snuggles at Cats N’At while Sarah checked in for her sleep-away music camp at the Woodlands. Amy was in absolute heaven with a tiny black kitten on her lap and countless cats and kittens roaming around. Sarah was excited to settle… Read more »

Lately, I have had times of feeling unmotivated, unenthused, and as if there is nothing I can think of that I want to do with my time. I think this is my grief or sensory overload speaking so I’m holding it gently. Riding the bus to and from Sarah’s camp for two weeks was an… Read more »

Amy is officially a rising sophomore! Freedom! She worked extra hard in the last couple weeks, as with every trimester finale with projects, papers, and presentations galore. She loves her school, but she is excited to have time to catch up on sleep and read books for fun. Sarah completed her first week of camp… Read more »

It’s 5:45 A.M. You scream about wet socks. No, crayons don’t go in the dryer. It’s 9:30 P.M. You try to sleep. Every fifteen minutes, you tell us that your favorite color is yellow. It’s 7:30 A.M I hurry you along. You pause to photograph every bus. It’s 12:30 P.M. I sit with you as… Read more »

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about Sarah since she finished high school. She is drawing ever more thorough drawings of Granddad and of Tom’s taxi. She started weeding the yard, admittedly pulling up some things that maybe could have stayed rooted, but still! She did a load of laundry when her favorite… Read more »

Sarah graduated from high school! What a huge accomplishment, full of trying again after challenging moments, full of bus rides, school jobs, and after-school plays. She and I took the bus to her graduation practice, and it was fun to see her hanging out with her friends while waiting for everyone else to arrive. For… Read more »

Mother’s Day was a marvelous experience that required great restraint on my part not to fall into old habits of cleaning the kitchen. After we all got our own breakfasts, I was not to cook or clean. Sarah made sloppy joes (making the sauce from scratch) for lunch with some help from Carl. Amy made… Read more »

Thank you all for the love and support about my stepfather’s death. My mom wrote a beautiful obituary that really captures his spirit and impact. It has been interesting to move through grief a second time in so short a span of months. The sadness about Ralph passing didn’t hit me much until I got… Read more »