Category: Roots

Roots, Share, Tend

Nana Who?

Featuredby Debra Palmquist2 Comments on Nana Who?
Nana Who?

"With the words, You are a grandmother... I became something different than I'd ever been before." Anna Quindlen from Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting by Anna Quindlen At Orchestra Hall with Louis to hear Cantus sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock, 2017. For the first time, my husband (aka Papa) and I (Didi) took care [...]

Dream, Grow, Roots, Share

Swim Flight

Featuredby Debra Palmquist11 Comments on Swim Flight
Swim Flight

In a dream I dive off a pier into a lake.  I am not a strong swimmer, but today I dive with ease, surface quickly and skim along the water’s surface like Olympic racers do, in a rhythm that is easy and strong, fast and even.  I can see fish and plant life below the [...]

Roots, Share

Containing Grief

Featuredby Debra Palmquist6 Comments on Containing Grief

My parents died of cancer, mom (in 2017) just 8 weeks after diagnosis and Dad (in 2014) after being sick for a year.  And over these last few years, I have been a student of grief, hungry for ways to express it in a healing way, to seek out others to give me a “how [...]

Grow, Roots

Forest Bathing

Featuredby Debra Palmquist5 Comments on Forest Bathing
Forest Bathing

Friluftsliv “open air living” is the desire to be in nature. The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku “taking in the forest atmosphere” or “forest bathing.” I first heard of this concept in a yoga class. We were asked to gaze out the window and find a tree in the near distance and study it while in [...]

Roots

Revisiting Mother’s Day

by Debra Palmquist4 Comments on Revisiting Mother’s Day
Revisiting Mother’s Day

  Seeds are my Mother's Day gift.  My first without my Mother.  Tall bellfower, leadplant, old field goldenrod, spotted Joe Pye weed, copper shouldered oval sedge, milkweed, all in clear plastic bags labeled with growing instructions.  Sun exposure, soil type,  moisture ideal for them.  The seeds range in appearance from cottony wisps, to the smallest [...]

Roots

Moving Kids

by Debra PalmquistLeave a Comment on Moving Kids
Moving Kids

    It feels like urban camping. I bring my sleeping bag, wear jeans, no make-up. I make sure my clothes are dark, something that doesn't show newsprint and an outfit that can go from oven cleaning to dinner. It is our third child, our baby that is moving to Chicago. The others have had [...]