Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Sunday night I sat across the table from my husband at a restaurant with huge windows that opened onto the sidewalk.  It was a moon-drenched night — just as it was in Honolulu the night my parents got married.   … Continue reading →

The year that my sister and I got camel saddles was the Christmas we never stopped talking about.   In 1966 we lived in a fashionable suburb of Cairo.  Our villa was just a few blocks away from the vast Sahara … Continue reading →

Once I had a student from Egypt who asked me for a word in English.  He took an Arabic word I did not know and created a picture of it in my mind.  “Mrs. Campbell,” he asked, “What is it … Continue reading →

I am at the beach remembering–weaving the past into the present moment and at the same time committing the beauty of now to future memory.  We  memorize the moment and outline it with what has been. Hope realized has its … Continue reading →

I hear this year’s anthem of our collective grief over and over: “2020 sucks.” I find myself dumbly nodding and it feels like a betrayal. It isn’t that I’m blind to the suffering and losses of this year. I’m not. … Continue reading →

The doorbell rang. This is a tiny detail, but I love tiny domestic details. I love them in Virginia Wolfe and Elizabeth Berg and Anna Quindlen and Ann Patchett. And yes, I love writing them. The doorbell rang. I was … Continue reading →

I measure my life at the beach, which is not the same thing as living a measured life. I don’t measure my life in T.S. Eliot’s coffee spoons— those moments are too small and disappear too quickly like teardrops in … Continue reading →

Family history, like history itself, is never perfect and is shaped by chance, circumstance, and story. Family history, like history itself, is always a little more complicated than it seems. My father did not want to get married and he … Continue reading →

Right now I am happy. And I truly believe that when I feel it, I should say it. It compounds the feeling and makes it twice as strong. Writing it down makes it even stronger. That is why gratitude journals … Continue reading →

I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. Parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents conjugate hope, courage, and determination. I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. This has been going on for days and yesterday Virginians found out … Continue reading →