Slice of Life: Coffee not the way I like it

On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets regular messages about what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, supplements to use, supplements not to use... Especially now, as I'm trying to rebuild atrophied muscle, I've been paying attention to protein and ways to sneak in a little more here, a little more there. 

Has anyone else been listening to Mel Robbins podcasts? I haven't listened to many, but I did catch a recent one with Dr. Stacy Sims. On it, Dr. Sims shared about her morning beverage. She mixes protein powder into her coffee, and she described it as much like a latte. Caffeine AND protein? Brilliant. 

I'm going to admit here that my morning coffee is usually delivered to me (shout-out to husband Garth), and so I shared the idea with him.

"Maybe mix it into the milk," I suggested, and then pour the coffee over it. 

Garth brought the potion up, delivering it to my nightstand, and the aroma, was, well, a little disappointing. Not the usual Starbucks Verona. Instead, well, a little fake vanilla-y. 

I took a sip, and a clump of undissolved protein powder stuck to the roof of my mouth. Despite repeated efforts, that stuff stuck. I got myself a spoon and went to work stirring and dissolving. I drank the protein-laced coffee, but the morning java didn't hit like it usually does. 

Since then, I've tried small dosages and eliminated the flavor element. I've also upped the shrimp, chicken, and egg intake so that I can justify a return to coffee au naturál. If anyone elso has sneaky ways to up the protein intake, my aging muscles would welcome them! 

Slice of Life 2025: How did he find it?

On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

 

Last month during the SOLSC, I wrote a post about my dad's cars. I'm not private about my writing, and many of you know that three of my daughters slice in the March community. We talk about each other's writing a lot in our family, and we almost always comment on each other's writing. 

On that post, a comment surprised me! 

JC3 would not be recognized by anyone but me, but I knew exactly who that was! My mother reads all of our posts; she must have mentioned it to my brother. 

       

                                                   

Okay, do I believe my mother who also reads our blogs? I definitely don't believe that typing the beginning letters of my blog would get you there. J-U-S-T has too many much more likely hits than mine. I texted him, curious. 

I have to say, he is not only very right, but also very funny. And yes, he's showing up in a slice. 

On a more serious note, I think about this event in conjunction with today's quote from Ann Lamott. Writing is a connecting and powerful force in this unbalanced world. 

Slice of Life: An interesting Monday morning for NYT games

 On Tuesdays, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

  

 

Spoiler Alert: Answers to yesterday's Wordle and Connections included in this slice. 

Content Alert: Inappropriate innuendos

As I do every morning, I began my morning puzzles with Wordle. For reasons I won't get into, I started with PAINT. Not good. STARE? Still not good. And even a dumb mistake caused by playing too quickly so I could get to some slice reading. When I got to my fifth guess, I was reasonably certain of the answer, but surprised at the choice of words. I mean, I know the word has multiple meanings, but still, I was a little surprised. 

Our family shares the daily Wordle results, and, since Julia and I were the early players, I laughed at her text:

Thinking about the teacher I know who usually plays Wordle with his class, I figured he could explain the meaning of BOOTY if he had to. Yes, some of the kids would have some previous experiences with that word, but I could envision the possible giggles being manageable. 

Then I played Connections. Again, I was a little wide-eyed at the purple category. _____ PLAY? Horse, screen, word, and... wait for it... fore? C'mon NYT! It couldn't have been 3-point? Or childs? How about re? FORE??? 

I sent one of my colleagues a warning about Connections since his class loves to play. 

Booty and foreplay would be a tough double whammy for a Monday morning! Here's hoping no one had to deal with that! 

Slice of Life 2025: 31 of 31- Wrapping up the SOLSC 2025 Challenge

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

I've enjoyed hosting the final week of the Challenge, pushing myself to read different slicers, carving out time to check in on comments throughout the day instead of my early morning and evening routines. I've written before about how the slicing community reminds me of a coffee shop in that so many slicers have their posting routines. There's a cluster of people who I feel like I met every morning between 5:45 and 6:30. We all shared our comments in much the same way as we might line up and place our coffee orders. Dawn, Jess, Tracey, Molly, Amy, Cindy, Kim, Ana, Fran, Sally... I'll miss you in the early morning commenting brigade! 

I'd thought about the important things I wanted to say in this post, but my imposter syndrome is real, and other slicers have already written such beautiful reflections about the importance of writing and of this community. I'm inspired to spend time in April returning to some of my posts from previous years; I think I'm consistent with my writing territories, but I'm curious to see if my theories align with the patterns I may discover. 

Thank you to all of you who have shared bits and pieces of your lives through your writing, and who have supported the bits and pieces of my life I've written about. March 2025 has been a healing journey, and my world has been much more confined that it usually is. I'm grateful for the connections of the community, maybe more this year than in any other. 

I know that I'll continue to connect with some of you throughout the year on Tuesdays-- as soon as tomorrow. Others, I look forward to March of 2026. 

Onward, 
Melanie

Slice of Life 2025: Day 30 of 31- Healing, automaticity, and writers

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Today is Day 30 of the writing challenge, and it is also Day 32 of my healing challenge. I've accepted the fact that the two are phenomenally intertwined. Even though I am keeping up with daily videos and notes about my knee progress-- that was how I was trying to compartmentalize slicing and healing-- this damn knee keeps showing up in slices. 

But I had a moment of bringing many aspects together this week. Stay with me. I think I can make this make sense, but I'm using writing to process an idea right now. Over the last several months, I've been working on a book about the foundational skills of writing-- those skills and strengths that have to be in place or on the way to being in place for writers to have meaningful access to their writing process. Core strength to sit up, fine motor skills to make lines and curves, handwriting skills, spelling, sentence structure, oral language, and the metacognitive power to direct all of it-- and then start generating ideas, planning, drafting... What a feat writing is. 

As I've been healing-- Heal is my OLW for 2025, and a perfect one so far-- I've been paying attention to the work my brain has to do to accomplish basic tasks. For the first couple of weeks, I couldn't remember or make myself lift my leg. I'd lie there and will my left leg to move. Will my left quad to contract. Will that heel to get off the bed-- just a little. I'd lift and lower my right leg almost like a coach. C'mon lefty, this is what it should look like. Still, getting through those two sets of twenty leg lifts was a major accomplishment. I know that I closed my eyes and maybe even legit-napped after some of those early sessions. Now, thirty-two days later, leg lifts have regained automaticity, but I talk myself up and down the stairs, using verbalization to remind myself how to place that left foot ahead, contract, and balance to move that right one behind it. On about day twenty, I stood in front of an escalator, and I had to watch Clare navigate it in front of me in order to remember how to do it. 

I've known that healing is exhausting and zaps energy, but until now, I haven't thought about how part of the reason for the energy zap encompasses the amount of cognitive energy that regaining automaticity consumes. Walking is a very different activity when you have to think about and direct what part of your foot hits the floor first, how your leg should bend and straighten during which part of the process, and how high your foot should come up from the floor. All of those thoughts make a walk across the kitchen a significant effort. There's something about this that relates to the writing process. It's a very different process if you have to think about holding yourself up, manipulating your fingers, forming the letters, and spelling the words... I'd like to believe that I've always celebrated young writers and all they are pulling together, but I think that losing and having to regain my automaticity in activities as basic as lifting my leg gives my greater appreciation and awe. 

If you're still reading, Fran Haley's post this morning is a lovely thank you to the slicing community. There are so many reasons to write, so much insight, so many connections. Without sounding corny or overly dramatic, her post is a beacon for the importance of empowering every young writer with the automaticity they need to write with humor, sorrow, courage, encouragement, belief in themselves and in others... her words, but in a different format. 

This rambling, unplanned, post has brought me to how, like Fran, I'm grateful for writing and this community and the ability to be a part of it. 

Slice of Life 2025: 29 of 31- Dinners and bedtimes

 

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Even though I have tried not to focus on my knee and its rehabbing (TKR on 2/26) this month, the topic tends to sneak in, and I have to preface this post with the admission that 8:00 pm is late for me this month. And for whatever reason, nerve pain seems to wake up at about the time the rest of me wants to sleep, so there hasn't been a lot of flexibility with my early bedtime. 

Clare's slice from yesterday details our Friday night dinner plan. Go me. A restaurant! Sort of a recovery milestone, right? If you read her post, and you don't have to, you'd know that her schedule mandated a 7:00 pm reservation, which she did communicate to me, and I did repress. That extra hour was a stretch, but the lure of normalcy was real. I took an afternoon nap, and I kept my pants on. (Literally).

We had some early warnings as we prepped for our 7 p m reservation. Winnie, known in this community for her occasional rolling moments, had in fact had a smelly afternoon binge, and she needed a bath. With fifteen minutes allocated for our fifteen-minute drive to the restaurant, we needed to make a five-minute stop at the pet store for shampoo or we'd be bunking up with a smelly dog. (Not happening). Yes, that math made us a tad late for our already too-late reservation. 

The restaurant, new to us, was a little too bright and a little too loud, but more concerning was the fact that our table was much too high. A bar height table is a challenge for a person who can't comfortably hand one's leg for extended periods of time or bend past 100 degrees to rest on the chair rung. I had to admit hurt-knee status and ask for an accommodation. A stool under the table solved that problem. I thought about ordering a beer-- the place was owned by a local brewery-- but I was slow on the decision-making process. When Garth's beer arrived, it was a little warm. Since it was nearing my bedtime, I kept my intake to occasional sips of his not-quite-cold-enough beer and my water. That was fine. 

Maybe our real rookie move was ordering a couple apps before our dinner, but we were hungry. Or maybe the waitress didn't get our order in when she should have. Or maybe they had to catch the chicken for Garth's sandwich...

Whatever the answer was to the maybe, it took a long time to get our dinner. Long enough that I asked if it would be soon. (As a former waitress, I don't like to do that.) Long enough that I thought about asking for a to-go box. (I was splitting my meal with my mom so that wouldn't have worked.) Long enough that we all ate fast and had zero interest in dessert. (Good for the calorie counters.)

At least Garth dealt with Winnie when we got home. I was close to sleep when that clean little dog snuggled in next to me. 

Slice of Life 2025: 28 of 31- My dad's life in cars

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Ten years ago when I spoke at my father's funeral, the focus of the eulogy was on passion, purpose, and play. Those were the perfect unifying threads for his life. But having dinner with friends tonight, we heard stories about one of their mother's ill-advised car shopping escapades. I had some entertaining thoughts to myself as we drove home, thinking about how car stories could have been the unifying thread for my father. 

The first car I remember him driving was a Plymouth Duster. A gold one. A gold one with a crocodile roof, or so he told us. According to my father's lore, the roof had come from a successful wrestling match between my father's doppelganger, Okie from Muskogee and a Mississippi crocodile. Okie used to visit when we were kids, showing up at the front door with my father's bathrobe on, a guitar, strange hats, and sunglasses. He played guitar badly and handed out jelly beans and jujus, my dad's favorite candy. Strangely, Okie NEVER showed up when my dad was home. We believed it all, and I can still feel that roof under my fingertips. I know I've written about Okie in past years of slicing. He was a lot of fun. 

At some point, the Duster was upgraded to a Saab which was totaled when my dad fell asleep driving home from an all-day fishing trip. Saabs are solid, so he was fine, but RIP cute blue Saab. Somehow the dealer convinced my not-so-agile dad to buy a black 16 valve VW Scirocco with special racing seats and lots of bells and whistles. I think I was in college during the short Scirocco era, which means that my younger brothers were new drivers. I shudder a little at the slices they could right about driving that car. It gave a fast lesson in going fast. 

I don't think it was more than a month old when he parked it on the wrong side of the street and some drunk driver hit it head on. The damage might have been less if it hadn't been head on. (Lesson: Never park on the wrong side of the street.) Since it wasn't totaled, the new black car got towed to service station to await the insurance inspector, but entrepreneurial car strippers got there first and stripped clean-- anything they could take, they took. That totaled the VW. RIP hot fast car. A more sensible Saab returned to my father's garage bay. 

In the twilight of Dad's driving years, he got his self-proclaimed dream car, a BMW that was too big for any of us to feel comfortable in. His driving skills, never great, diminished, and that boat-like Beemer had a number of bumper blemishes before it morphed into a smaller more manageable, but somewhat eccentric turquoise Volvo which eventually got sold right out from under him-- if you asked him. "One day my car was in the garage," he'd say to anyone who'd listen, "and the next thing I knew it was sold right under my nose." (Note: It's tough to revoke an older person's driving privileges.)

Tonight, listening to the stories of an older mother negotiating used car deals as we finished dinner, I thought about my carless but car-craving father negotiating a car to be delivered to his driveway. (The car arrived, my mother and I intervened, and the disappointed salesperson brought the car back to the lot.) Even when dementia was in full force, he loved cars and worked to broker a deal. 

Dad definitely had some great car stories. Thinking about his cars and his retirement plans of restoring a Model T, an earlier post of the month, Dad and his cars really did encompass the passion, purpose, and play that defined so much of his life. 

Slice of Life 2025: 27 of 31- Ladder time

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

When Julia and I went to see her physical therapist-- for her knee, not mine-- the topic of ladder work came up. Julia had already mentioned it to me. "You'll need to do some ladder work," she'd said when I talked about my worries about not being able to move well on the tennis court any time soon. 

I'm still high-fiving myself for walking up the driveway and going foot over foot on the stairs, so the idea of ladder work? Not anytime soon. 

To give you an idea, I've grabbed a picture of a PT ladder from the internet and included it below. The idea is that you do various agility moves within the ladder rungs. It's harder than you'd think with a limb that is learning to move again. 

In any case, while I was at PT yesterday, I was paying attention to Jen and what she was doing. I'm nosy that way at PT, but when you're' just sitting there with ten minutes of heat or another ten minutes of ice, you have the choice of phone scrolling, watching the weather channel, or checking out the other orthopedic woes. I know other people pay attention to me, as well. Adele, an older woman who's been in a couple times when I've been there, has had to bear witness to my PT's (borderline inhumane) bending of my knee. I've tried to keep my moans in check, but I can neither confirm nor deny that I've made some noise no and then. Adele told me on Monday that she thinks of me when she wants to complain about her PT. (I'm not sure how to feel about that!)

Getting back to the ladder focus, but still as an aside, I was a Jen fan because she brought her 2 to 3-ish daughter in a stroller and that little girl spent the whole time in the stroller watching the goings-on and looking at her book. Not an iPad in sight. It was so refreshing! 

I finished my exercises on the staircase and headed to the squat wall as Jen's PT laid a ladder down on the floor for Jen. 

I couldn't help it. "A ladder," slipped out of my mouth. 

"You'll get there," the PT said, understanding my point. 

I did my squats, and I did the bike, and I worked through my lunges. And Jen skipped, hopped, and bounced through the ladder. 

"I want to do ladders," I said to Kate, my therapist, as she rigged me up the ice boot. 

"Yeah?" she said. "Let's do those on Friday." 

Did she not realize I was being aspirational? I didn't really mean Friday. 

However, Kate was serious. On Friday, she's laying down that ladder. For me. 

Slice of Life 2025: 26 of 31- Living life more than once

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Alan Wright used to slice in this community, and I loved the name of his blog which was Living Life Twice. He still writes a lot, although he doesn't participate in this challenge. I love the idea that writing and sharing allows me to revisit moments that have mattered and share them, talk about them, giggle over them, cry over them... 

March in the Meehan community is interesting because every interaction has the potential and possibility of ending up in a slice. There's a little joy and a little worry mixed with that. Our four daughters have been rotating through the house this month, and three of them are slicing. You may have already met them in the community. I've had many moments where I've wondered if a snippet of the conversation would be captured in writing. March Madness and Meehan Memoirs...

The other night, Julia was in bed with me, and we were watching basketball as she was doing some work and I was reading some posts. "Oh look," she said, showing me an email that had just arrived in her box. 

I smiled at the response she'd gotten, a little smug about the role I'd played. 

The next thing I knew, the bed started shaking a little as Julia couldn't control her laughter as she write a post. You can read it here. Yes, she wrote that slice while she was sitting right next to me. I've now lived that moment once, twice, and more, Writing and slicing and being in this community has given me that. 

Today's conversation with Larkin was across many miles, but it was all about the rightness of oldest daughers, and we both had some aha moments. I wasn't surprised that it was the focus of her slice today, and it was fun to read her written rendition of the conversation.  I have a feeling we'll continue to talk about it, but I wonder if we would have thought about the patterns and the truths without the power of written reflection. The moment would have been much more fleeting. 

And Clare was home and I thought reading and baking bread while I tutored, but I found out from reading her slice that she'd gotten a little afternoon siesta! She and I have been spending a lot of time together, and I've loved reading about her interpretations of some of the same experiences we've shared, and, when she's been away, I've gotten peeks into what she's up to. There's something intimate about these peeks. 

Yes, I teach students that they can write to entertain, inform, and persuade, but writing also deepens relationships and sustains memories. I've been struck this year at the interactions and connections between slicers, as well as the family members who have been willingly brought or coerced into the fold-- conversations about or within slices or even guest appearances have brought me joy. How lucky we all are for this community. We all get to live the moments we share on repeat and have an archive of written memories and comments as well that we can visit whenever we need it. 

Slice of Life 2025: 25 of 31- Pay attention and do something

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Like some of my friends, I vacillate between paying attention to what is going on in the world and keeping my head in my own personal sandbox. Over the last few weeks, it's been fairly easy to focus on whatever I've wanted-- healing, basketball, SOLSC, daughters' visiting... I've admittedly gotten my news from the Daily Skimm and some education information from the EdWeek overviews. I should be doing better. Doing more. 

Yesterday, one of our EL tutors texted me, and she's not one to bother me while I'm on leave. We have several families from Yemen, and one of the families has several children. The parents are currently in Yemen with two of the children while elementary children are home with older siblings. Yemen is now on Trump's red list, so travel it the US will be limited if not altogether banned. 

Our tutors know and support this family. They know A.'s struggles to wake up and eat before sunrise during Ramadan. They know he's doing his own laundry. They know he's worried about his parents coming home before Eid. They give him rides to soccer practice, and they know possible travel routes that could get his parents home. Could they fly to Egypt? How long would they have to stay in Djibouti? 

Today, this morning, policies and bans and boycotts are impacting a family that lives a mile from me. A family whose children I've met and hugged. When will they get to hug each other again? 

Today I'll do better with topics I've been ignoring and repressing. 

Slice of Life 2025: 24 of 31- Apologies to the bluebirds

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but I feel like I've been coming across a lot of birds during the 2025 SOLSC. There have been birds making messes all over cars, birds as gifts, birdsongs, displaced birds, skittering sanderlings... a veritable text set. All of these posts have made me want to do more for our feathered friends. 

It's a little tricky where I live. We live in the Connecticut town with the highest rate of bear sightings in the state-- an auspicious claim to fame. Given the town name of Simsbury, it gets dubbed Simsbeary by the local punners. We are not allowed to hand bird feeders in town, and if we do, they don't last long. Local bears sniff out fresh bird food right away. 

After reading about bluebirds and spotting a few of them flitting in the back of our yard, I remembered the bluebird houses that have been in the back of the garage since last year. 

"I have a couple of requests," I announced this morning in the company of Garth and Julia who is visiting for a couple of days. "The first one is can we get the bluebird houses back up in the back yard?"

The two of them both looked at me askance. 

"You're joking, right?" Garth said. 

"Absolutely not," Julia said. 

"That's not happening," Garth said. 

From upstairs, even Cecily, another visiting daughter, piped in. "We are not welcoming bluebirds!" she yelled from the stairs. "Don't you remember the mess of my car?"

"And what about the early morning obsessive banging on the windows?" Julia added. 

"Alright, alright," I said. 

They were right. The resident or maybe the non-resident bluebirds had some messy and loud habits that I repressed as I thought about the loveliness of welcoming birds. I guess I'll continue nurturing birds vicariously through many of the posts I read. Apologies to the neighborhood bluebirds. 

At least the rug is changed in Julia's bedroom. That was my other request. 

Slice of Life 2025: 23 of 31- A ride on the Peloton

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

I bought my Peloton in November of 2020. It was one of those pandemic purchases, and I still love it. I had no idea how competitive I would get about it. Yes, I like the leaderboard. And, yes, I am constantly trying to set new personal bests. I never know anyone I'm riding with personally, but I give high fives and appreciate receiving them. #IFYKYK

Over the last few weeks, I've been recovering from a total knee replacement. Today is Day 24. Even though they get you up in the hospital and walking right away, walking is in quotation marks. Every day is a little better, but there have been a lot of moments when I've been like, wait, how do I do that?  Raising my leg in the first place...stepping onto an escalator... going down stairs foot over foot-- they all seem like new tasks. 

At physical therapy, I've been riding the bike. Two weeks ago, I made it three times around, and it was a big deal. This past week, I can get on and get right around, so I've been asking Kate, my therapist, if I can ride my Peloton on the non-appointment days. On Friday, she gave me the go-ahead. 

"But you have to be super careful of the pedals," she said. "They're weighted, and you might not be able to do them."

I promised I'd be careful. I'd even get someone in my family to help. 

This morning all said family members left me alone at home. There were friends to meet, drawings to deliver, appointments to make, and I waited. Finally my husband came home with bags of groceries. 

"Can you help me with the Peloton?" I asked. 

"Can I put away the groceries first?" he asked. 

"No," I said. 

He got the message. 

The two of us went downstairs and he held my foot as I pedaled the first time around. 

"Just spot it," I said. "I think it's fine."

It was fine. I found a five-minute ride, and I accepted the fact that everyone was blowing by me. I was under orders to ride with zero tension and I couldn't go fast-- I had to take Instructor Christine's instructions to ride at my own pace VERY seriously-- but I finished the ride. Woohoo-- watch out leaderboard! Not my personal record, but one of my personally best. 

Maybe I'll do a ten-minute ride tomorrow! 

Slice of Life 2025: 22 of 31- D. writes an essay

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Today's post is more of a celebration, and, after yesterday, I need it-- one can only write so much heaviness! 

I've kept up with my tutoring throughout this knee rehabbing process, and I'm always happy to work with D. He has missed very few sessions in the two years I've worked with him. Despite being on Zoom, he is focused, and he is eager to learn. Friday afternoon? He's smiling. Sunday morning? He's doing his best. Saturday afternoon? Yep, he's all in. My daughters shake their heads at his commitment to our two times a week sessions. "Who happily shows up for writing sessions on weekend mornings?" they've asked many times. 

D. is a high school senior with some significant disabilities. When his mom contacted me a couple of years ago, I wasn't sure how it would go and if I could really teach him to write. Sentences were hard, and we started with really simple ones. His fluency grew, and we developed a predictable format for our sessions. With scaffolds and sentence stems, he learned to write various types of paragraphs, understanding how to shift depending on the genre and purpose. 

Progress has not always been consistent, but it's been northeast. His mom and I have had many conversations, brainstorming topics and supportive strategies she could work on with him. She wants him to have as independent of a life as is possible, and she wants him to know how to write. I have so much respect for her. 

Over the last few weeks, we've been working on essays. Nothing fancy, but essays. And this afternoon, D. write an essay with very little prompting from me. Not only that, but he also explained the smart things he did with his introduction, the types of elaboration he used in his body paragraphs (yes, he used that language), and the call to action he included in his conclusion. 

D. doesn't always smile, but he did today when I told him that if I were there with him in person, I'd be hugging him. What a testament he is to hard work, efficacy, and a commitment to learning. He's an inspiration. 

Slice of Life 2025: 21 of 31- Mailboxes and memories

 Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Memory works in funny ways. I can barely remember last week. Even yesterday is a little blurry. Who was it who visited? Oh, yes. I've got it. But honestly, had to coach the synapses to fire. 

And yet, when I called my mom and she shared about her mailbox having been hit this afternoon, floodgates from 22 years and 338 days ago were wide open, specific  and visceral memories pouring through. Mailboxes are triggers for me and for my mother. A smashed mailbox began a series of events that changed our lives forever. I understand. 

My father was still using his crutches on the day some raucous teens drove down my parents' street on a mission to smash as many mailboxes with a baseball bat as they could. It was spring. Maybe it was a dare. Sometimes the what-if game plays with me and I think about what if they'd had a party to go to or a place to hang out. What if they'd had a test the next day they cared about or a special someone to snuggle in a basement couch somewhere. Doesn't matter. They didn't. And instead, they smashed mailboxes for laughs and ha-has. 

For reasons I do understand-- I inherited the controlling tendency to supervise and offer my two or three cents when others are taking on a task that is usually mine-- my father couldn't stand my brother in my father's basement fixing my father's mailbox, and yeah, he decided to head down and provide mailbox-fixing advice. Except at the top of the stairs, he led with his foot and not his crutches. The cement floor was a a terrible landing pad for a headfirst fall down the flight. My brother saved his life in ways I won't go into here. 

I remember where I was when my mother called. (In the garage watching our three daughters play on the driveway.) 

I remember what I was wearing. (My gray jumper and white t-shirt. I was 9+ months pregnant with our fourth daughter.) 

I remember what my mom said. (Something's happened to Dad. He's taken a bad fall. You need to come.) 

I remember leaning on the car to catch my breath, finding the words to explain to my in-laws who were there that I had to go and Garth would be home soon, driving the mile to my parent's house, watching my brother lie in the grass and cry. I remember what my brother was wearing and how his wife held him in the back seat of the car as my mom's neighbor drove us to the hospital so we could meet up with the helicopter that was transporting my father. I remember helping my mom wash the blood from her hands at the hospital as we waited in the neuro ICU waiting room. 

I know exactly why my mom was traumatized tonight when I talked to her on the day when an old man, for reasons he can't explain, knocked her mailbox down. I'm not sure how she had the courage to bungee cord it together, and in many ways and for many reasons, I wish she hadn't, but I understand. 

Tomorrow, my husband will head there first thing, and he'll fix the mailbox. Maybe the floodgates will close up again. Mailboxes are triggers. 

Memory works in funny ways. 

I understand. 

Slice fo Life 2025: 20 of 31- Who is Mentor Max?

 

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

As I write this post at 4:40 am, I have just googled when exactly the first day of spring begins. I'm ready. It begins at 5:01 this morning. That's when the vernal equinox happens, when the sun's rays are directly over the equator, and we have exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. I've always been a fan of the solstice days-- those days in June and December of longest and shortest days-- but there's also something about the equinox that's calling me this morning. 

Sleep's been a commodity over the last few weeks, and my pre-waking dream this morning was dappled by dreams. Someone named Max Winter (I'm not joking) was my writing critic/mentor/tormentor... I'm not sure which. And he kept nudging me to find my throughlines. I was nudging back. Slices don't need to have throughlines, I think was my message back. (If it wasn't, maybe it's what I wanted the message to be.) Slices are greenbelt, free writing... a way to capture moments in time. A time to play with words and b build writing habits and figure out writing identities... leave me alone, Max. 

But what are you trying to tell me, Max? I know my world's been small these weeks, and sometimes finding a moment to expand and celebrate has seemed hard. I'm not a bare-my-soul slicer, you're right , Max. But there have been a few emotional moments in my 2025 slicing... leave me alone, Max. 

I had whispered to myself a while ago that during this pause in life that I'm having, I'd have time to return to that novel that's been dormant in my google drive. Funny. The plot purposely and intentionally happens between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. Could Max's timing be purposeful? His arrival woke me up in time to post literally as the 2025 equinox is about to happen. And his last name in my dream was winter? Okay, okay. 

Dreams rarely make sense, and I'm not sure Mentor Max makes sense without a lot of interpretation. 

Today, I will write. And how weird is this? As I finish, and by the time I get this post into the SOL comments, I think it will be just before 5:01, an important moment in the Earth's 2025 pathway. 

Slice of Life 2025: 19 of 31- Birthday Girl!

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Julia has the benefit of having her birthday fall in March, so every March 19 has been somewhat of a tribute to her. The last two years have been especially fun in the SOL community because she's joined in with a blog and (almost) daily slices.  

It's been a year! Julia's white coat ceremony happened over the summer, and she started year 1 at the University of Michigan. Most of her stories have been positive, and it's been surprising and relieving to hear about the fun she's been having there. It's a grind, but there's a decent balance of fun. 

                                                            

We had an unforgettable family vacation in Hawaii with many magical moments. I think Julia would have hiked the circumference of Big Island if she had her way, but she settled for the daily treks the rest of us could handle, and she had plenty of smile in between. 

Julia and several of her med school friends visited Larkin in Chicago over the weekend, and Larkin did a bang-up job of celebrating not only St Patrick's Day, but also Julia's birthday. 

Happy 27th, Julia. You are awesome. 

Slice of Life 2025: 18 of 31- A bug or a van?

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

"Did you see that VW bug?" Clare asked. We were on our way to my PT, and she was driving, so I was checking out the cars on the Volkswagon/ Volvo lot pretty closely. "It's so cute," she said. 

I hadn't seen any bugs on the lot, and I admitted that. (I think I would have noticed one because Herbie was always a favorite, and I still have fantasies of my 60-something self zooming around in a topless Bug. #Won'tHappen) It would be fun to have Clare in a little Bug. I could borrow it, it wouldn't take up much room-- how cute! And what a surprise... Clare's always talking about getting something big that can fit all her stuff and then some. 

What I had noticed was the new VW van, though. In a world where vinyl records and flare jeans have made sort of a comeback, why am I surprised that the VW van look is being resurrected? Somehow the brown van with the light brown roof that my friend Cally's family had was infinitely cooler than the blue Country Squire with wish-it-was-wood paneling. (I took a lot of that paneling off, to be honest, when I was figuring out how to navigate a too-big-for-me car! Each pulled-off panel could be a slice!)

Clare continued to talk about how much she liked that Bug. It's electric. The color. The possibilities for fitting in all her stuff and friends on road trips...

Wait? What? 

Was she talking about the Bug that was on Sesame Street with all the people who kept climbing out? Does anyone remember that? 

"Clare," I said, "you're not talking about a Bug. That's a Herbie car."

"Did I say Bug?" she asked. "I meant van. I love that van."

Well, that checks out. 

Funny how cars can pull at memory strings, though. Ah, those VWs. 

Slice of Life 2025: 17 of 31- Wordle and insomnia

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Sleep has been tricky with my new knee. I'm getting better at walking, but I'm still at about the level of my daughters when they were babies when it comes to sleeping through the night; they are fabulous adults and terrible sleepers. So I'm left with the nightly decision of how to handle the current plague of insomnia. 

Thanks Mary Lee Hahn for the Wordle inspiration! I don't have a poem, but my 1 am wrestle with wordle offered a fair amount of alliteration. I'm a random first word Wordler, but in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping, I went with Julia's go-to, STARE. I had a little jolt of excitement as I watched the first three letters turn green. Except then, I realized I could have some trouble. There are a LOT of  five-letter words that start with STA. Staid, stall, stalk. Stack, stash, staff... uh oh. 

I definitely could have been more strategic and saved myself the stress of still having options with my 6th guess, but who's strategic at 1:02 am? 

I could come up with a lot of lessons within my middle of the night wordling. Maybe the most obvious is wait until morning! Maybe tonight will be the night that it's not even an issue...