Cindy McCainEaster in Europe
It’s good to be back on the blog and away in Spain. I’m writing again, finally, from my balcony in Tarifa in another Cádiz– not the one beside Kentucky lake where I grew up, but in a province of Andalusia. From here Santiago, seeker in The Alchemist, set out on his adventure. Here I’m taking a much needed break from mine. As the fog…
To Moms from Marrakech to Music City Post-Holiday
Thank you to Kate, an Australian expat mom I met through InterNations who moved to Marrakech last fall, too. Her son visited and returned home before my children came, and she set up lunch for last Sunday before I left for London knowing I’d need a friend after the holidays who understands the joy of sharing this life with family, then sadly saying goodbye again….
Christmas Day in London
Christmas Day we attended the service at Westminster Abbey, another gift. Seats had been reserved months in advance but days before our trip someone returned three. The sermon referenced the truce on December 25, 1914 between English and German soldiers. More on the story here. As we sang hymns and heard the children’s choir in a cathedral built in 1066 where William the Conqueror…
Christmas Eve in London
Seems like old times. My children are asleep in the next room and I’m up early writing. The Three Musketeers are together again. We spent a Happy Christmas in Merry Ole England, my first love as an English lit teacher when I began traveling abroad. My son wanted to see London, and my daughter has loved it since she, my niece, and I toured…
Past, Present, Future Dickens of a Christmas
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. –A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Happy Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving, made a US federal holiday by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, is still a day set aside to stop the striving, shopping, doing (unless volunteering to feed the hungry and shelter the cold) in order to JUST BE…with family, with friends, with our Creator from whom all blessings flow. The older I get the more I am determined to…
Kids, Chaos, and Puppy Love
No joke. I truly thought when my children left the nest I’d fly away, too. If I didn’t make it as far as Italy or Ecuador, I’d migrate south to Seagrove or west to Big Sur. I’d park my vintage camper (circa 1959) and chase seagulls, collect shells, and make a mermaid my muse. I’d bake pies like Sylvia Plath and burn rubber if…
True Blue
I’ll have a blue Christmas. But not the kind Elvis sang about. I had those blues all spring as I fretted over fall when my nest would empty. I’d always said that when my chicks left, I’d fly away, too, preferably to anywhere under the Tuscan sun. Or, if I stayed in town, to a bungalow in East Nashville. But when the whole Metamorphosis-…
There Is a Season
They say they built the train tracks over the Alps before there was a train that could make the trip. They built it anyway. They knew one day the train would come. Any arbitrary turning along the way,and I would be elsewhere. I would be different. What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain.The house protects the dreamer. Unthinkably good things can…
Happy Birthday to Me…Thanks for the Memories
After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life…There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When…
Summer Art and Play Dates
Like freebirds we picked up bright and shining things along the way…good conversation, laughs, leisure. We met artists who reminded us we are all made in the image of the Great Creator. By honoring their inner children with their work, they invited ours to join and play.
Cindy McCain 