Our Cat has Nine Lives
We are on Martha’s Vineyard, and today is Caitlin’s birthday. I’m reminded of another birthday of hers spent here, the year she turned 12. It was the terrible year of lung surgeries and months-long inpatient recoveries. But that summer, we received a two-week respite from the hospital, and the respite was spent here. Those weeks […]
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Jess and I were looking through old writings to find one of Caitlin’s wise nuggets for a quote on a wall mural she’s creating in Kenya. I found this in an old email she wrote to me. It’s a good practice, and thought I’d share: “I always look back on each year and pick out […]
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The other day, somebody ( I want to say Dani Shapiro ) posted a quote by Renata Adler: “Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.” It was my birthday week, which comes on the heels of Mother’s Day, and those words made me reflect on them. Then yesterday morning – the big day […]
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Recently, I had the uncanny experience of sending a friend of Caitlin’s a rare gift – a baby present that Caitlin had purchased in Bruges in 2011, in the event that this friend ever had a little boy. Mieke recently gave birth to a son and what a pleasure, to send that tiny Dutch knitted […]
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and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ Two years of COVID. Five years since I last saw Caitlin’s beautiful face. Life has wings and time is a dream. Little Matches has been out since late April and I’ve been working hard to get people to know it exists, to plant the seeds […]
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It’s a wondrous thing to create a child, send her out into the world, and see what happens. Caitlin’s life influenced many others and over the years, especially the last few, it’s been heartening to learn how. One friend from her high school days is an artist and a few months ago, told me she […]
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This morning, Nick and I were talking about the fact that some people seem to be afraid to read Little Matches when a friend sent me a message: I hadn’t yet started LITTLE MATCHES because a friend’s son is dying of cancer, and I didn’t think I had the emotional capacity. Last night, however, your […]
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I asked some of Caitlin’s friends if they would want to write up a little something that I could put on my website. Here, Kenley describes Caitlin as only a lifelong best friend from childhood can. Someone recently asked me how I thought Caitlin might feel about Little Matches being out in the world. I […]
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Hello to every wonderful human who has been with me here since December, 2016. Your support sustained me, and encouraged me to write LITTLE MATCHES. And now… it is here. It is my greatest wish that it will inspire every reader to think deeply about life, and purpose, and about what’s really important at the […]
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Three years ago right now I was in Italy at a literary workshop. I had 25 pages of Little Matches written but I still I had no idea whether it would ever become a book. When I arrived home, I resumed my practice of setting a timer every day and sitting down to write “no […]
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9LivesNotes 