Welcome to My World!
I grew up in San Francisco, CA believing that everyone’s day began in a blanket of fog that burned off by noon and returned by 3 o’clock each afternoon. My sports-loving dad instilled in my four siblings and me a love of Giants baseball and Saturday trips to the dump. He also grounded me for life as a high school sophomore. My Irish mom had me believing there really were eyes in the back of her head and that little birds could talk.
Welcome to My World!
I grew up in San Francisco, CA believing that everyone’s day began in a blanket of fog that burned off by noon and returned by 3 o’clock each afternoon. My sports-loving dad instilled in my four siblings and me a love of Giants baseball and Saturday trips to the dump. He also grounded me for life as a high school sophomore. My Irish mom had me believing there really were eyes in the back of her head and that little birds could talk.
While my sisters played “school” using old college textbooks and Suzy Smart dolls, I played “office” and dreamed of the C-suite. After college and ten years in corporate America, I went underground as a Little-League-loving mom of two rambunctious boys. My life changed when my eldest son, at the ripe age of three and a half, complained that soccer interfered with his playtime.
Suzy Smart, circa 1962
In 2004, armed with a M.A. in Theology and a recently rescued Bernese/Shepherd mix, I began to glean pearls of wisdom from children and dogs:
A three-year old would rather search for crystals than learn the rules of soccer.
If you insist on teaching three-year olds the rules of soccer, bring a ball for each child.
Dogs don’t care if a toy is new; they just want you to play with them.
Dogs accept us exactly the way we are.
Toddlers, dogs, and old people all ask the same thing: Kiss me. Hug me. Tell me you love me.
I’d like to believe it was the M.A., but our dog Bandit was largely responsible for my return to the workplace. I mean, who hires a mom with no experience in fundraising to be a Development Director? Turned out the president of a Jesuit college prep school was a fellow dog-fanatic. He agreed to my terms: 1) The dog comes to work. 2) If it doesn’t work for the dog, it doesn’t work for me. Over the next 10 years, the Jesuit tagline “Finding God in all things” came to life in the daily office insanity of a growing pack of dogs who roamed the halls and lit up our days.
But as a grad student, I was struck by words from another Jesuit priest, Fr. Walther J. Burghardt, S.J.: Contemplation is “…a long, loving look at the real.” I had seen this in my work with children as part of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a spiritual formation method for 3-to-12-year olds (www.cgsusa.org). Finding anything requires us to look, to take notice. Children as young as three do this quite naturally. But our “Hurry ups!” and “Quick-quicks!” can unwittingly extinguish this gift. When given the opportunity, children have an immense capacity for contemplation, for wonder, for empathy.
Waffles, Bandit, and Archie; 3 of the (eventually) 7 dogs who helped us run Brophy College Prep, Phoenix AZ, 2008
Two Stories About My Sons…
Brian, my eldest, came home from “Career Day” in sixth grade and announced he was going to be a rocket scientist. This is the boy who at five would burn leaves and ants under a magnifying glass and fry eggs on Phoenix sidewalks in 110 degree weather. He did in fact become a rocket scientist (he works on the Mars Rover team!). I am convinced that squeezing in courses on photography and wilderness survival cultivated his observation skills enroute to his vocation.
Scott, our younger son, was the proverbial boy who needed his head screwed on or he’d leave it somewhere. The year he went to kindergarten, Scott would finish breakfast and I would tell him, “Go get dressed. Brush your teeth. Bring your backpack downstairs.” Half an hour later I would find him in his little whitey-tighties on the floor of his room playing with a toy. He’d tell me sheepishly, “I brushed my teeth!” The whole world is one big, beautiful distraction for Scott. He doesn’t know how NOT to pay attention – to a sunrise, to a coyote howl, to harmony, to an aroma wafting above a pot on the stove. He has become a yoga-loving, guitar-playing, rock-climbing curiosity-seeker.
The common denominator for both my boys is their capacity for wonder. To wonder is to take time. And increasingly, for me, there is a sacredness to time. Time is too often filled with non-stop activity, to-do lists, going in search of “the perfect.” But time can be a wonderful invitation to slow down, to engage with the ordinary. Maybe this is why I love walking my dog. Penny can sniff the same exact bush every single day; get lost chasing a leaf down a path; perk up at a squirrel’s shriek. Dogs are fully immersed in the present moment.
While parenthood taught me to look at the world through the eyes and heart of a child, children and dogs remind me to slow down and be present. Reading books is a way for parents and children to do this together. As “boddlers” on our laps, shoulder-to-shoulder through grade school, and as Kindle-sharing adults, books are an invitation to wonder.
In 2015, I stepped away from raising money and began to explore what my third act might look like.
I’ve been blessed with time for hiking, cycling, kayaking, backpacking, reading and writing.
The news and the discord and rancor that we hear today can be distressing. But I am committed to hope and to sowing joy as a Picture Book author. Reading books and specifically—reading books to children—has taught me this:
What is possible must first be imagined.
Me, revising; Penny, supervising; June 2020
Cycling The Road to the Sun, Glacier National Park, 2016
Circumnavigated Lake Tahoe by kayak, July 2020
Mt. Baldy, San Gabriel Mountains, September 2019
P.S.
When the pandemic set in, I joined the millions of others sheltering-in-place and jumped on the sourdough train. In the early days, my interest in the cultivation of wild yeast stemmed from too much time on my hands (okay, okay, AND an irrational fear of kitchen appliances). I bet I’ve baked hundreds of loaves since March 2020, lots of time for that “long, loving look at the real.” Here’s what I know now: when given time and space to grow, sourdough, like children and dogs, will show us what is truly essential in life.
Dogs with whom I have shared my life:
Gus, Bandit, Sydney, Archie, Bear, Roxy, Waffles, Penny and now…
BONNY
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