. . . reflecting on the practice of living

“Flowers scattering –
The water we thirst for
Far off, in the mist.”
― Kobayashi Issa

 

practice vb. to do an activity repeatedly to gain skill; to do something consistently, regularly n. the carrying out of what one believes or the work they do; the customary way of doing a thing

Welcome, friends, family, and perhaps a few passersby to my blogging adventure. It is a place where I will practice writing, and pay attention to the practice of living.

These pages will contain a mixture of reflections on current life, stories from my past, and stories from family history—some of them are excerpts from pieces that I had to cut from my memoir in progress. If you are interested in joining me, I’m happy to have your company.

cover-photo-3-3

New book from Kathleen Weaver Kurtz

Introductory text / where to purchase / more information.

Link to the book page.

Recent Posts

Lullabies

By kathiekurtz | November 19, 2022

Part I I’ve been catching up on some podcasts from the past, and the other day I listened to an episode of “We Made you a Song” by The Steel Wheels. The person for whom the song was written in this episode requested a lullaby. She described singing to a child at bedtime as a…

Wash Day

By kathiekurtz | July 28, 2022

This chapter didn’t make it into my memoir, even though it was one of my favorites. It holds happy and satisfying memories that make me wish I could sneak back into the past for an afternoon—to sit and watch Grandma iron and listen to her stories. Maybe ask her a few questions I didn’t know…

Rosa Returns, or A Thin Place on Grant Avenue

By kathiekurtz | May 27, 2022

(Note: I wrote this seven years ago, shortly after the Memorial Day weekend when this event took place. We still lived in Manassas at that time. The new inhabitants of Rosa’s house were close family friends of hers, and by extension had become our friends as well.) Rosa and I were the only two people…

Rosa

By kathiekurtz | May 17, 2022

One of the people I think of on Mother’s Day is Rosa. For twenty-four of the years we lived in Manassas, she was my next-door neighbor. Our backgrounds were very different. She was of French Huguenot ancestry, grew up Methodist, and converted to the Catholicism of her husband. There were political issues on which we…

Check it Out!

By kathiekurtz | April 11, 2022

A good friend and member of my writing group, Saloma Furlong, has just posted a short interview with me on her website. She poses a number of questions about my writing process, how I look at it and how I experienced it. Check it out here, if you are interested. We are offering a drawing…

College Mennonite Church

By kathiekurtz | March 17, 2022

I’ve just recently talked with my Aunt Dot by phone. She is the remaining member of my mother’s family and is now past her mid-nineties and heading toward one hundred. My mind went back to something I wrote the year she turned ninety, when as many family members as possible gathered to celebrate with her.…

Watching Aunt Esther

By kathiekurtz | February 14, 2022

Many mornings I watched Aunt Esther dress. Her bedroom was across the hall from our upstairs living room. I’d go and sit on her bed waiting for her to come from the bathroom in her housecoat. Her dressing ritual was unvarying. She always began with her girdle, the literal foundation of her clothing. It held…

Paper Dolls

By kathiekurtz | January 15, 2022

Those of you who have read The Blistering Morning Mist might remember the story about my mother’s paper dolls, the ones I didn’t want to be divided. They still exist, undivided, after almost 100 years. The other day I was searching for something in a storage box of her things and came across them. Glancing…

Sitting on the Beam

By kathiekurtz | January 9, 2022

There is an image that comes to me when I am struggling, a way of picturing myself. I also used it with clients sometimes to help them picture how they were feeling about a task or a skill. Imagine a sturdy wooden beam stretching across a distance, a beam that is holding you up. It…

A Ritual of Friendship

By kathiekurtz | December 8, 2021

This is a season of the year crammed full of ritual—not just the churchy kind, although there is plenty of that, but many other customs and tradition that we perform faithfully and in the same way year after year. The little word the is often an indicator. We put up, not a tree, but the…