For the past week, I’ve been sitting on a beach on an island off the Washington coast. It has been glorious! If you know anything about the Pacific Northwest, you might think I’m crazy. It’s April. It’s been a wet winter and most of my friends headed for warmer climes for spring break. Not me.… Read More Two Rights Don’t Make Anyone Wrong
Real love, the kind that takes your breath away, is forged in the messier moments of a life together that is more like a Jeep ride on the tundra than a cruise through the Mediterranean. … Read More Largess Over Vases Every Day
Winter is waning. As I was waiting for my two Boxers to sniff every blade of grass in the back yard the other day, I took one look at my garden and started reviewing the offspring of all of my friends in hopes that one was the mother of a child with a penchant for… Read More My life is a garden, and it needs weeding.
After more than a year of constant virtual meetings, my eyes are shot—bloodshot. For fear I was doing permanent damage, I made an appointment with my ophthalmologist. As part of the exam, he placed some dye in my eyes and shined a bright light directly at them. Suddenly, I could see every blood vessel in… Read More How a trip to the eye doctor helped me see the world less clearly
Some time ago, dear friends of mine retired and moved from Washington to Texas. I am terrible at goodbyes. That should be evident by the fact that this blog has been sitting half-written for nearly a year. I had intended to write it the morning after their going away party. I started to, but the… Read More It’s Never About The Furniture
Like most people working from home, I have spent the last 13 weeks video conferencing. My vibrant, three-dimensional world has been reduced to grainy images intermittently stilted by poor bandwidth, virtual backgrounds signaling our desire for sandy beaches and mountain retreats, and a grid of flattened faces. To be clear, I am grateful for all of that. Without it, the… Read More I need a heartbeat.
Birds of a Feather
Sense of belonging is a beautiful gift. You owe it to yourself to find that place where you fit at your true self.… Read More Birds of a Feather
Thursday night I got the game ball. It felt so great! In my dubious athletic career, I never got the game ball. I have thrown a game ball. I have caught a game ball- once, in the back of the head. I have dribbled a game ball, shot a game ball, even caught a game… Read More The Appreciation Equation (You might want to sit down. Turns out, it’s exponential.)
My father tore the carpet out of our house a few weeks before my sister’s wedding. The carpet started out the color of sand on a southern beach. After years of being trampled on by firewood toting teenagers, it had grown dingy and rough. Once he got a thought in his head, it was like… Read More The Busyness of Avoiding
Our book club recently read the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Less by Andrew Sean Greer. It was a strange and beautiful story. Toward the end, the main character is reflecting on giving up a younger lover as he grapples with the disdain he has for his aging body. One of his friends points out that this lover did… Read More Seeing Through the Memories of Your Heart
I started my day in kindergarten yesterday. Every day that I get to be in a kindergarten is a great day. First of all, they are adorable. Right there, you are guaranteed to start your day with a smile. They bounce and bop down the halls, happy as clams that it is Friday morning and… Read More Kindergarten- Where we all belong.
It’s 4:15 AM and my REM-induced travels are abruptly ended by my clock radio blaring Miranda Lambert. In silence, I get up, get dressed, and brush my teeth. In the workout room, I turn on the fan and put my bike shoes on. I spend 30 minutes on the bike, change shoes and put in… Read More Make a Habit of It
As soon as I shut the door, I knew. I heard the click of the lock and my stomach sank to my feet. I collapsed forward. My forehead hit the top of the window giving me an unobstructed view of my purse and both sets of my car keys sitting prominently on the passenger seat… Read More Empathy Gap – Don’t Fall In
Last weekend, my best friend and I recruited a few enthusiastic volunteers (our husbands and one of our dear friends) and we pressed 400 pounds of grape must. I have been making wine from kits for about 20 years with pretty solid success. In addition to getting about 30 bottles of delicious vino for my… Read More Of Grapes and Friendship
For the last couple of weekends, I have been shooting my daughter’s senior portraits. It was so special to me that I was able to do this for her- that she wanted me to do this for her. Though I have shot a number of senior portraits and I always feel honored to do it,… Read More Adventure Days!
I remember when we picked him up. After months of looking, we found him at a breeder in Omak. My husband has a knack for tracking down the best pups. Dog-less for a year or more, we finally decided it was time for our daughter to have her own dog. After much negotiations on breed,… Read More A Girl’s Best Friend
The summer before 5th grade, my father took me on a week-long backpacking trip in Glacier National Park. We planned the trip over the spring on our every-other-weekend visits. My dad pinned a map to the wall in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. Back then, the map shifted from grey to a deep… Read More Making Memories Under the Big Sky
When I was a little kid, I felt strangely like two different people. In retrospect, I imagine that other children of divorce felt the same way. But it was the 70’s and divorce was rare in our Catholic community, so I didn’t have anyone to compare my experience with. You see my parents were diametrically… Read More Two Sides of the Same Girl
It was a spring, Saturday morning in Georgia. My father must have been away on business because, had he been home, I would never have realized my own true power. It was just my stepmom and me. Our blended family was new and more like a salad than soup. Still getting to know each other… Read More Stronger Than I Thought
Next week, my husband and I will be celebrating 29 years of marriage. As our anniversary rolls around, I find myself thinking back to the year of our wedding. He proposed to me the weekend I graduated from college. We were supposed to be apart for the next school year as I moved to Seattle… Read More Wedded Bliss (and the not so blissful parts that make it truly a blessing….)
I thought this post would be easier to write. I realize that no matter how carefully chosen, my words will likely be inadequate. It is ironic since I have entitled this “Nothing Left Unsaid”, and yet, surely, there will be something left unsaid. I went to a celebration of life this week for a truly… Read More Nothing Left Unsaid
Being a mom is a humbling experience. I have learned more from my daughter in the last 18 years than I learned in any classroom. And I have spent 28 years of my life in a classroom learning, just saying. But I don’t think I ever felt more ignorant, incompetent or unprepared as I did… Read More The Magic of Motherhood – Part One
Despite sitting at one of those back-bending cafeteria tables, I found myself completed enthralled listening to a coach talk about his athletes this week. He spoke with such heart about the journey the team took together to win the state championship. He talked about each athlete’s strengths and contributions to the team. He talked about… Read More What the Best Coaches Know
If you visit our house, you will get a warm welcome from the four-legged creatures and, of course, the two-legged ones. Buttercup, our two-year-old Boxer (or The Toddler as we affectionately call her), monitors the door vigilantly. One must be prepared, after all, as friends can appear without notice. As soon as she hears someone… Read More A Warm Welcome and A Wiggling Butt
On a hot day in July in 1984 in Fairbanks, Alaska, I met the man, for the second time, who would become my husband. I had been baling hay on a Thoroughbred farm just northeast of Fairbanks that day. Fairbanks in the summer is beautiful. It is sunny and light all day. The landscape is… Read More Don’t Mistake a Flower for a Weed
My dad had a second story apartment in the Casa Del Rey overlooking Broadway. I would visit him on the weekends and we would walk up the street to the corner QFC to buy food for dinner. He was on the road every week it seemed, so he didn’t keep much on hand. It was… Read More The Truth About Lying
I was invited to a birthday party yesterday. I never pass up a birthday party. I would not have missed this one for the world. The grandmother of the little Sweet Pea, who was turning one, is an old friend of mine. Although I have to say that she and I might have different time… Read More Never Pass Up A Birthday Party
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to hear Manny Scott, one of the original Freedom Writers, speak. If you ever have the chance, don’t miss it. He is an extraordinary individual who really embodies the power and resilience of the human spirit. At the end of his speech, he said something that was both… Read More You Can Lead a Horse to Water
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things was spending the night at my grandparents’ house. They lived in a small house on Queen Anne Hill. Though back then, from my tiny eyes, it was an enormous mansion. It was so different from our cookie-cutter suburban rambler in north Seattle. When we… Read More Grandpa’s House
My daughter is a junior this year. She is our only child. The good Lord blessed us with only one child but, in so doing, He blessed us every single day after. In just over a year, she will leave us to go off to college and start this new adventure. The part of her… Read More My Heart
I was two months into my first year in a new school when I found myself hunched over a lunch table in the staff room praying for an earthquake. Not a big earthquake. Loss of life and limb was not necessary. I didn’t even want property damage. I just wanted everyone to get stuck in… Read More The Truth Will Set You Free
When I was a new teacher, I applied for a job in a small town in northwest Washington. I remember driving into town wearing my most professional skirt suit, firmly ensconced in my big old pickup truck. It was a beautiful drive from my house 52 miles away on country roads they brazenly labeled highways.… Read More Making Things Right
As I was driving home from work tonight, Corey Hart’s Never Surrender came on. You probably will only know this song if you were embroiled in teenage angst or young adult drama in the mid-1980s. It was the theme song for that. I remember it because I recorded it on cassette tape and sent it… Read More Do It For A Friend
My daughter missed her dentist appointment this week. In general, she is a very responsible teenager. I only bring it up because every time I hear the word dentist, I can’t help but run my tongue over the edge of my top right front tooth. You see, I have a chip in my top right… Read More Don’t Cry Over a Chipped Tooth
I was sitting at Finaghty’s Irish Pub the night before we were to celebrate the life of my father. I was with my husband and daughter and surrounded by my sisters, most of their families and my stepmom. Family had been arriving from out of town and were still trickling in. We are not a… Read More Don’t Miss the Joy in Grief
Over the course of this week, as we prepare to celebrate my dad’s life, we have all been poring over pictures. And I remember so much of what I forgot. And I see things I didn’t know but they are so obvious to me now. We know our family members because we have these long… Read More Looking at Life Through the Keyhole
I think at the end of a life, it is the little things you remember most. The seemingly inconsequential moments become indelibly written on our minds and hearts. Oh sure, every relationship has big moments. There are marriages and births, graduations and new homes. And every relationship has good times and challenging ones – even… Read More It’s the Little Things
Last night I went to my favorite Christmas party. I have been attending this party for 26 years, though it has been going on for much longer than that. In those years, I have missed it twice: once when my daughter was only three weeks old and once when that same daughter got sick (on… Read More Growing A Family
I think this is my very favorite picture and that is saying a lot given the sheer volume of my collection. I didn’t take this picture but when I look at it I truly wish I had met the man who did. When I look at it, I wish I could give him one of… Read More Love in Black and White
Catherine Matthews 