Prayer flags, made by a friend, have been fluttering their good will and compassion in my backyard for a month now. I love the idea that these silk flags, vibrant but fragile, are doing their best for the universe in the short time they’ll be here. They’re a daily reminder that my life, too, is impermanent. Earlier today at a happy hour celebration, I watched …
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It was a Sunday morning. I’d slept in, meditated, and gone into the kitchen to make chai—when I had the feeling I was being watched. At the sliding screen door stood a large grey tomcat. I walked over and he sat, looking up at me. I sat. I opened the door a crack, put my hand out, and he arched his head under my fingers, …
You can’t always figure out why two particular people bond. Often they don’t know themselves. Last weekend I went to the wedding of two truly beautiful young people, who married at the bride’s parents’ home in a garden the bride, a professional landscaper, had designed and her mother and father—working hard—put in with their own hands: six-foot stands of sunflowers and double tiger lilies waving …
They’re usually called Clothing Swaps, but a friend referred to them as the Naked Lady Parties—and once I’d heard that name, I couldn’t think of them by any other. Of course, nobody actually goes around in the buff, but these get-togethers do involve a number of women, most in their skivvies, and all of them trying on their friends’ cast-off clothing. It’s so …
It’s time to celebrate blackberries! It was blackberry season when I arrived on Whidbey Island. A friend showed me a culvert cache in her neighborhood where I picked a plump berry half the size of my thumb and popped it into my mouth: juicy and sweet and warm from the sun. Within a few minutes we filled a recycled plastic container with berries and, after …
So many people send me opportunities to make and save money. I have to remind myself: what’s great in life has no price tag, but nothing—no thing—is ever free. Like the message I received from the credit union that holds the loan on my car. They’ll give me $150 if I refinance my loan. It sounds good. I’m sure they’d lower my monthly payments. But …
I was once a cat person. Cats are lovely, graceful, and independent; they can be affectionate but they can also be demanding or aloof. Like many people I know, cats are provisional friends. Then I was given a cat-sized dog, and I learned that a dog is always your friend. I have never been greeted with such exuberance as I am by this dog—and it …
Whidbey Island is a softer place than many, a place where people don’t dress up much and might have a real conversation with someone they don’t know if they see that person, say, at a farmer’s market (there are five in the summer) or in one of the local libraries (five all year round). A friend visited me from New York, and the story he …
When I planted my first garden and before anything else began to take hold, I had a pot of flourishing mint. Mint is easy to grow—so easy I’d been warned not to plant it in the ground. Mint can take over, I was told; with a small garden, you wouldn’t have room for anything else. So, I had this huge pot of mint, and for …
A plague is what it felt like, though there were no human casualties that I know of—just flowers and fruits and many, many leaves. It’s the annual tent caterpillar invasion in the Pacific Northwest. About a month ago, I was walking down the street to visit a friend and noticed a large, furry caterpillar near me on the pavement, walking—well, moving—in the opposite direction. A …
I'm Margaret Bendet. I left a journalism career to live in a spiritual community and, after several decades, left that community to become, once again, a professional writer. That’s the nature of my re-entry. The question is, how to do it gracefully. How to return while remembering where I’ve been and why I was there.