Motherhood: Hide-n-Seek serious 'round here

Hide-n-Seek is a serious affair at our house. Because of our shortage of closets and trapdoors, we’re forced to play at night, lights off, amongst slippery shadows and mounting paranoia.

One bedroom is usually home base with the lights on, casting just enough light to traverse by, nothing more. I encourage you to try this deadly style of Hide-n-Seek.

The ground rules: Typically only one person hides (usually one brave parent, sometimes two scared children pair up). The rest of the family must seek as a team. Each time you must use a hiding spot never before used in the entire history of mankind. Once found, all children and gamely spouses must be chased back to home base. Timing comes with experience, but if you can launch in the nanosecond before they find you, you’ve scored.

Skate skiing

Snow had fallen so delicately on the ski trail that it appeared as if the groomer had never passed, the crystals falling into the grooved corduroy as if hand-placed every half-inch to fill in the pattern. She was only a month into skate skiing. 

Just two weeks ago, she had stood on the trail, barely able to push her body, skis and anger over the slight hill in front of her. A hill so slight it was barely perceptible to the naked eye. She had spent the last half hour falling, slipping, trying, failing. She had finally turned on her husband in anger, “Why am I doing this? I am not a natural at this. I suck! This sucks!” Hot, surprising tears filled her eyes and she looked away, embarrassed. Her husband clicked the tips of his skis together and said nothing. It was Jan. 19, the fourth anniversary of losing her mother. He knew what sucked.

Book Excerpt: Mother's Class Ring

Here's an excerpt from my book!

When she found her mother's class ring, she reacted physically, a jump in her heart, in her hand as she reached for it. It was in the jewelry box, tucked in the velvet folds like all the other rings, but Lainey had never seen it before. Her mother had never mentioned it, never told the story of the day she received it, never showed it to her girls in all the years since 1965. Lainey slipped it on her own finger, her right hand, a counterpart to the wedding ring on her left, gifts from the two people she’d built her life around, with and for.

She rubbed the translucent Mother of Pearl stone and the Newberry High School emblem set upon it. She felt daring, like she was looking where she shouldn’t. This ring had seen her mother through her first boyfriend, her first heartbreak, and, later, the night she snuck out in Grandpa’s truck and stripped all its gears.
The ring held on during meeting Lainey’s father, loving him and marrying him. Then been set aside sometime between raising children with him, fighting with him, caring for him and some four decades later, saying goodbye to him; some days wanting to and, finally, having to.