by Rudri | Jan 9, 2018 | Children, Mothers/Daughters
January 8, 2018. This is twelve. Watching my daughter gaze at the ocean, I want to whisper, “The whole world is yours.” Twelve is a precipice for both of us. She is coming into her own, while I am discovering how to mother my almost teenager. The preview...
by Rudri | Jan 8, 2017 | Children, Everyday life
January 8, 2017. This is eleven. I talked about her turning this age, but today, I repeat what I’ve said here before – I will never quite be able to embrace time’s passage. Eleven is inching toward grit and grace, the tween and teen years, the...
by Rudri | Dec 12, 2016 | Children, Everyday life, Memory, Mothers/Daughters
Last night, I shifted through some old toys from my daughter’s closet. My eye caught the dull yellow of the faux cereal box and my fingers touched the mini-silver pots and pans and in my head I heard her five-year-old voice say, “Momma, do you want...
by Rudri | Aug 15, 2016 | Children, Everyday life, Life Lessons
As I sit down to contemplate my thoughts, I hesitate. Writing always makes the intangible pulse with a beat. My daughter and I spent last week in Dallas visiting family and attending a wedding of a childhood friend. I begged my daughter to let me snap this picture at...
by Rudri | May 16, 2016 | Children, Life Lessons, New Beginnings
“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time....
by Rudri | Jan 7, 2016 | Children, Fathers/Daughters, Mothers/Daughters, New Beginnings
Tonight will be the last night I tuck you in as a nine-year-old. Ten will greet us in the morning. Ten. I keep repeating this number over and over. Each time, tears brim in the corner of my eyes. I remember your first bath in our home, a small apartment in Texas. I...
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too. Read More