The blog is on hiatus for a while as I work on other projects. Thank you for reading!

A few weeks ago I visited a friend whose husband had just lost his father. They have a five year-old boy and a girl of seven months. While I was packing for the trip, my friend sent me a text sharing her son’s effort to brighten her husband’s day.

“Daddy,” he said, “I have two surprises for you!”

“Really? What?”

“I got Shrinky Dinks, and Kaitlin is coming!”

My heart warmed to be included with the esteemedShrinky DinksI remembered from childhood, even more so when I pulled onto their street to see her son standing in the driveway waiting for me.

I don’t fall in love with other people’s pets easily. I need to see what they’re made of before they’ll be enjoying my undying affection, and I want to feel connected to another soul before it will cuddle on my lap.

If people gravitate toward pets that are similar to themselves, I was surprised to fall hard for two pitbulls who were not even mine. When a close girlfriend got married ten years ago, dogs Timmy and Georgie came with the husband.

I did not like pitbulls.

[See alsoEulogy for MargaretandWindmills, Truckstops and Transitions - Living in the In-Between (For Margaret, I)]

The week before last, I held my grandmother’s hand while she died in a quiet room at Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo, New York. Her son and his wife, my uncle and aunt, stood on her other side.

She had seen her mother, she'd said.

“It’s ok to go with her, Mom,” my uncle said. “You did a good job. We love you. We’ll see you again.”

We repeated how much we loved her.

                                                                                                                                                         

I have been offline for the past week due to a family emergency and will be posting a new blog soon. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy this guest blog I recently wrote for StudentsFirst.org, thanking the public school teachers I was blessed to have growing up in Barrington, RI. I will always be grateful for the energy and passion they brought to their students every day!

Expectations were high. This was the Dalai Lama after all. Was it too much to expect the most profound insights we'd ever heard, solutions to the problems of the world at large and our smaller worlds within it?

This past weekend theTibet House, theDrew Katz Foundation, Columbia professor and Buddhist scholarRobert Thurmanand Newark MayorCory Bookerhosted His Holiness theDalai Lamaat theNewark Peace Education Summitin New Jersey. With the heightened security, bows of deference and the craning of thousands of ears toward his every word, it was hard for me to imagine what it would be like to face such out-sized expectations when traveling--feeling their weight in the very air between you and everyone you meet, people who want something important from you that they cannot quite name but expect nonetheless.

I earned my first paycheck as a writer when I won an elementary school contest for my story about a tiger's troubled friendship with an incompatible bee. It was the first time I realized I was in love with shaping words and images into story, and that if I worked hard enough at it, someone else may read it too.

Growing up in Rhode Island, whenever we had visitors my parents made my five siblings and I lead the same tour: along the terrifying but stunning cliff walks of Newport, followed by days at Second Beach where our skin crunched tight with salt and we dined in our bathing suits on picnic tables, feasting on clam cakes and watching the shadows move in until we shivered violently enough to go home.