Segullah Journal

MY ELDEST CHILD recently completed elementary school. On her last day I came to watch the “clap-out,” the annual farewell march of the sixth graders through the school hallways. Students, teachers, and parents lined up to slap palms with the graduates, while a tear-jerky song about friendship played over the intercom. As my daughter came into [...]

BUCKETS IN HAND, the boys and I set off to pick blackberries. We’re lucky enough to live near a park with lots of wild growth around the perimeter. The berry canes reached out thorny and threatening, heavy with the succulent fruit. After taking a needed taste to confirm the readiness for picking, we smiled our agreement. [...]

I’VE ALWAYS DONE EVERYTHING LATER than my friends. I was the last girl in my Beehive class to wear makeup. I didn’t decide on a career until I was twenty-two. I left for my mission when I was twenty-three—nearly two years after most girls leave—and it took me nine years to finish my bachelor’s degree. And [...]

CHANGE. It permeates our lives, constantly flavoring our existence. Sometimes it comes gently, freshening our daily routine with dewy sweetness. Other times its pungent sorrow steals our breath and leaves us gasping. Though we know to expect it, change often catches us off guard, leaving us unsettled and insecure. Times of transition are often the times [...]

OH, I CAN HARDLY SAY IT. I can hardly type it. I can hardly think it. Well, all right, here goes—empty nest. Now, that’s taken care of. And you know what? It wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, the EN Syndrome that many women face and fear is actually a misnomer. It should be renamed [...]

I dreamed of Oxford . . . (spires, a thousand spires, endless lectures, musty halls a solitary self in a Bodleian expanse A good life, my dear Wormwood. An orderly life.) then awakened to laundry and things to be wiped (countertops, noses, bottoms) How did this happen? And when, exactly? Time flows, it flows, it flows and [...]