Full of Grace

Things that made me smile this week:
(and boy is it getting harder and harder to find reasons to smile these days)


A house in my neighborhood has been a source of ill will because they never mow their lawn and it looks particularly unkempt among the adjacent manicured lawns. I remember many complaints lodged against them even when I was still working for the town. But yesterday when walking my dog I noticed these signs tacked to a few of their trees. Very well played.

Daughters and boyfriends all at the lake house to celebrate Peachie’s 25th birthday. 25??? When did that happen?


On a very chilly morning I happened to see a strange ripple in the pool. A baby chipmunk had fallen in and was doing the doggy paddle for dear life. I scooped him up in the skimmer and placed him on the lawn. The water had also been freezing and the little thing was shivering uncontrollably. I ran in the house and got a towel and he allowed me to pick him up and dry his fur and massage his little body until he had stopped trembling. I reluctantly put him back down and he ran away and disappeared down a hole.

Long time readers may remember my friend and therapist. Lauren, who died very unexpectedly after helping me recover from the darkest time of my life. Well, the other day Martha came home from school saying a man with Lauren’s last name came to the school to pick up his daughter and when she saw her she knew it had to be Lauren’s granddaughter. Martha said that she is a little copy of Lauren, with white blond hair, a huge, warm smile and those extraordinary piercing violet eyes. I don’t know why but it is making me stupid happy to know this.

Lost in Technology

Last week my dearest friend’s 94 year old father passed away. It was not unexpected and in some ways a blessing as he had not been able to enjoy life for some time now. After days of her dealing with arrangements and details. I thought a restorative hike in the woods was in order. 

In our younger days we would go backpacking for days, deep into the mountains. Trail markers were sometimes helpful but were often missing or obscured by vegetation. Sometimes trails would be obliterated by storm damage or by beavers blocking streams which created new ponds where the trails ought to be. Our only navigation was a USGS topo map and a compass. Using our talents and powers of deduction we always managed to find our way to our destination and find our way back out again. 

However, this was only to be a day trip and we didn’t give it much thought. Being painfully out of shape, we googled “easy hikes” in the Adirondacks and choose one listed about an hour away. We threw some water, bug juice and a few snacks into a day pack and off we went. We drove about 50 minutes, got off the correct highway exit and quickly stopped for a bathroom break. Then we turned on Waze to lead us to the trail head. But Waze was saying we were still an hour away when we thought we should be pretty close. A little confused about the discrepancy we still followed it’s directions until we were on a dirt road. The road quickly became more of a rutted path which dead ended and we were now so remote we lost the Waze connection. 

“Do you have a map?” I asked. Nope. Great. Seriously, who goes hiking into a giant forest without a map?

I am amazed at how much I have ceded all my trust to my phone and the technology in it. Maps, Google assistant, phone numbers, banking, grocery lists. For all the information it makes available to me, I swear it is making me dumber. 

Anyway, we got out of the car to walk around and see if we could get any internet signal. No. But in that silence we did hear the sound of rushing water, decided to investigate and came upon this, reaffirming the notion that all who wander are not lost. 

Okay, we were lost in the sense that we had no idea where we were, but we were leaving M&Ms along the way to help guide us back to the car so we were pretty sure we could get out.

We decided to explore a little knowing that if we could hear the waterfall, we weren’t too far from where we parked. We spent our time picking our way along the stream bed, occasionally leaving more M&Ms when we strayed, until we ran out of trail mix and decided we wanted a real meal. 

We were tired, sore and hungry but the time out forest bathing was extremely calming and soul healing.

Following the sound of the water we got back to the car, turned around and picked our way back out to civilization.  As soon as we were able to get a signal I googled “restaurants near me”. 

Sometimes I think my phone is trying to kill me as it steals so much of my attention and drains my soul and my memory banks. But sometimes it finds an incredible restaurant in the middle of nowhere for two weary hikers to rest and rejuvenate. 

Feeling quite accomplished for the day I consulted my FitBit. It told me we had "hiked" less than a mile in the three hours in were in the woods. Less than 1 mile?  I hate technology.

Photographs and Memories

I had reason to pull out an old photograph the other day. It is a photo taken a few weeks after Daphne and I had been attacked and I am standing with a friend outside a house she rented, me needing a new, safe place to live. In the photo I am still battered and bruised, left foot crushed and casted, not being able to stand upright due to so many fractured ribs. I am expressionless. Hollow. My soul had been shattered.


I began exposure therapy years ago and one of my biggest concerns was that all the rehashing of those events would desensitize me so much that I would no longer remember Daphne and her pain and subsequent death. It seemed disloyal and something else I can’t find the words to describe. Not that I wanted to be constantly controlled by the emotional pain, but I also didn’t want to forget it either. I especially don't want to forget her,


It was once a very difficult photograph for me to look at. Now, although I recognize that I am the girl in the photo , I find that I am having difficulty remembering who she was. Who I was. This year, for the first time, Daphne’s birthday came and went and I didn’t remember it. For years I would go into a deep depression on that day, and all anniversaries connected to her or that day. In more recent years I would go to her grave site. This year it passed without any commemoration or even notice.


I don’t know if this is just a product of time passing that would have happened anyway, or more a result of the desensitization of exposure therapy. Do veterans lose their memory of buddies killed in battle? Do I need to be more intentional in recalling memories like I now need to be intentional when putting down my keys? I don’t know. All I know is that photos can fade and discolor very quickly if not stored and handled properly. I think the same must be true of memories.