We spent the day in the Alps. I rode a cable car all the way to the top of Zugespitze — the highest point in Germany — while H skied the glacier below. Have I told you how much H loves skiing? If he had his way, he'd teach skiing year-round, barely scraping by as a ski bum. I tell him he should go …
No-fail tips for not losing your mind while traveling over the Atlantic in the middle of the night
Back in 2005, H and I flew with our children from Nebraska to Hawaii. We spent eleven hours on the airplane. Each way. There were no screaming children on the plane. My own children were teenagers and handled the whole thing quite well. My husband, usually a ball of energy who needs to be reminded …
Grip-Challenged
People say my cousin looks just like Muhammad Ali. They're probably right, but I've known him far too long to see the resemblance. He's my older cousin and the only boy on that side of the family. When we were younger, I pretended he was my brother . Since I'm the oldest in my sibling set, he was my …
Redeemed
The last time I'd been to Green Lake was forty years ago! What in the world? How did that happen? Naturally, nothing was as I remembered. Some things were older, some were new, some things had been moved, and other things (the outdoor pool I wandered around looking for until someone finally told me …
Green Lake
Tonight, we walked out on the peninsula where a willow tree grows horizontally, and stretches its limbs out over the lake. It's got that kind of twisted wood that tells a story, if you can make your way out over the water to sit on a branch and let your heart be quiet. We climbed 121 steps to the …
Letting Vacation Ride Shotgun
I don’t know why it takes such effort to get here, where time slows and work pauses and phones are silenced and to-do lists wait unchecked on the kitchen counter. Where we are re-created in the break from the routine. Maybe it’s the breaking that scares us off and makes us think we’ll be undone. But …