2024 STRINGS AND STORIES

When each of my children was born, I started a journal for them. Since they couldn’t talk for themselves, express their feelings or make their own observations, I did it for them. Maybe I shouldn't have, but they don't seem to have minded. Yesterday, I read this entry...

The mission of Creative Heartbeats is to empower individuals and families living with congenital heart disease. With Alex's recent passing, our family is more determined than ever to bring this project to fruition. We would love for you to be part of this endeavor....

    "Blessing for the Brokenhearted"By Jan Richardson In The Cure for Sorrow Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have donewithout this love. Let us promisewe will not tell ourselves...

My battered but faithful body, my new employee badge, my daughter's lunch pail, my boot-cut blue jeans - I might as well have been a bride walking down the aisle with my old and new, my borrowed and blue. Though, instead of an altar at my destination, I arrived at an...

I'm heading up to Seattle tomorrow. My daughter, Martina, is starting a master's program at Seattle University and I'm going to help her get settled into her new apartment. I am so excited for her!  She has worked extremely hard to get to this point in her life and I...

“I used to play the violin” is a refrain I hear often. It is usually spoken to me as I greet concert-goers after a performance, and is frequently followed by two additional thoughts - one that looks regretfully to the past (“I wish I had kept at it”) and one that...

I went swimming this morning at the YMCA. I don’t swim every day but boy does it feel great to start the day out this way. I’m going to be heading to Italy tomorrow so I wanted to get one last swim in before my trip. I’m not an avid swimmer. In fact, I don’t actually...

When I first saw Nadia Comaneci compete in the 1976 Olympic games I knew right away that I too wanted to be a gymnast. I went to sleep at night with images of Nadia's routines playing over and over in my mind. I dreamed of doing aerial cartwheels, back walk-overs and...

On a scale of 1 to 10,Where zero is no pain,1's a hint,2's a little,And 3 and 4 a tad more. By 5 and 6 there's no mistake,Our attention is fully fixed.We're moaning a lot,Happy we're not,By 7 we're calling it quits. By 8 we've certainly called for helpAnd we're...

I’m sure there was a hospital in Sacramento that we could have gone to - that we should have gone to - but my best guess is that my dad simply didn’t want to be stuck two hours away from Berkeley when he had a class to teach the next morning at Cal. I'd just have to...

Four weeks ago, just a couple days after sharing my Belle of the French Quarter story, something happened that reminded me just how quickly our lives can change from one moment to the next. I had a bad fall coming down a flight of stairs, busted my face against a door...

First published in the Summer 2021 isssue of The Exponent II. There used to be a painting of me on display in Jackson Square in front of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. The artist named it “The Belle of the French Quarter.” I suppose I should have been...

Sometimes things happen in our lives that are really hard to talk about. They remain buried and hidden until the right prompt comes along. For me, that prompt came in February of 2021 when I decided, on a whim, to take an online writing class. The first assignment...

I’m standing in the front corner of my 1st grade classroom. To my right, I can see out of the large windows onto the playground below where just minutes before I had been eating popcorn with my friends during recess. To my left, is the door to the hallway where my...

Her opening notes pierced the shadows of the darkening sky and startled me like lightning strikes illuminating a barren landscape. More than sounds, more than beauty, what her bow pulled from the strings spoke of experiences more foreign to me than even her native...