Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to be able to call myself a writer. An author. When I was seven and eight years old, I wrote little stories about elves and fairies that lived near a stream. I wrote sappy poems. This continued until seventh grade when I departed from the usual and wrote a very weird story that involved a circus and death via high wire and trapeze. I gave it to my English teacher to read, hoping she'd give me some constructive feedback. That didn't happen. There was feedback, but it was simply "This isn't even plausible." Nothing more. I was disappointed, to say the least. And I stopped writing. Then, when I was in college, I started writing again. I found writing classes to take, both poetry and short fiction. I had one professor write me a note about how he truly enjoyed my poetry. I had another professor tell me one of my short stories was first-rate. They both gave me encouragement and hope that maybe one day I'd see my dream of b...

In March of this year, Funny Delightful Son signed up for track, wanting to have something to do that included some exercise as well as being with his friends. He's never been a runner, so he went for the field events: shot put and discus. At the time, he was weighing in at around 225 pounds, which helps when throwing shot put and discus. However, Funny Delightful Son was unhappy with his weight and had been unhappy with his weight for several years. As a fourth grader, he stood a head taller than his classmates, and he outweighed them by quite a bit. Where his classmates were the typical thin pre-teen boys, he wasn't, and he got teased by it. The teasing spurred him to constantly round his shoulders as if he was trying to minimize how much space he took up. He started to wear t-shirts beneath button-down shirts or sweatshirts to hide his shape. I regularly encouraged him to stand tall, put his shoulders back, but he seemed only to sink further into himself. I hated seeing this...

Back in September, I received notice at work that I was eligible to apply for promotion. I filed the email away, not sure if I wanted to actually go through the motions of putting a promotion portfolio together, and when only a couple of days remained for me to declare my intentions to do so to the VP of Instruction, I decided I would go ahead and let the chips fall where they may. At that time I had six months to work on the portfolio, so I began sorting through all the "stuff" from the last three years and categorizing according to the different sections of the portfolio. Then Mom collapsed. The promotion portfolio was the furthest thing from my mind. And with Mom's death, thoughts about the promotion portfolio became nonexistent until about three weeks ago, when I could feel myself beginning to ease out of the grayness of grief. With encouragement from Hubby and colleagues, I began considering trying to put the promotion portfolio together. I didn't think I had e...