Milestones and Monasteries

Cathy LaGrow 34 Comments

PART ONE

The sky threatens rain and is growing darker as I drive west, deep into wine country. It is the afternoon of my 40th birthday, and I will spend the next 48 hours largely in silence and solitude. Tomorrow will be my first day off in four-and-a-half long years; this trip is my husband’s surprise gift to me.

I am headed to a Trappist Monastery. And I could not have conjured up a more pleasing destination, at this moment of my life.

As a lifelong introvert, someone who craves silence and solitude, having babies and becoming a full-time mom has been an excruciating adjustment. Every moment of my life is now shared. Every minute brings a new demand. On the cusp of my 40th birthday, I feel about 80. I am exhausted and depleted. Continue reading →

Capturing the Final Frontier

Cathy LaGrow 13 Comments

If you aren’t bewitched, baffled, boondoggled, and bedazzled (okay, maybe not that last one) by outer space, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Here’s the story. Of a scope named Hubble.

(Stick with me. This gets fantastic.)

In 1923, a German physicist named Hermann Oberth speculated that it would be possible to send a telescope out into Earth’s orbit. More than two decades later, the American physicist Lyman Spitzer wrote a paper pushing for such an instrument. And nearly twenty years after that, Spitzer was put in charge of developing a plan for this space telescope. Continue reading →

Food – A Hate/Love Story

Cathy LaGrow 22 Comments

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or Facebook, may have noticed that I mention food occasionally.

Okay; a lot, I mention it a lot. In fact, to the point where you might be forgiven for thinking I am a little obsessed with eating.

But it’s not my fault, honest.

I was born in 1970, to parents who were just becoming ultra-religious health-food hippies. Well: hippie-like, in an ultra-religious way. Drugs and sex and rock-n-roll: no way. Prairie skirts and wheat germ and supplements: heck, yeah. Continue reading →

Writing that rocks – A Fine Balance

Cathy LaGrow 6 Comments

Oprah and I have a bit of a checkered past.

I mean, no, we don’t technically have a relationship. If we did, I probably wouldn’t be hanging out on Twitter, or blogging. I’d probably be filming road trips with her and going on month-long vacations to Italy, and I’d have a nanny and a chef and a make-up artist, and I’d wear designer clothes and I’d eat really, really well…

Just look at Gayle.

I’m sorry, where were we? Continue reading →

So I Married a Non-Reader

Cathy LaGrow 17 Comments

I am the most voracious reader I personally know. And I married a man who doesn’t read.

Oh, he’s perfectly literate – he just doesn’t enjoy reading. At all. He is the kind of person who would rather have a so-so adventure, than read about a fantastic one.

This is understandable, once you know his history. He spent his childhood crisscrossing America in the back of his family’s tour bus, while they sang in churches and earned a living doing manual labor wherever they landed. At the age of eight, he worked in silver mines in Arizona, alongside his Dad and brothers. He became the family’s drummer when he was nine, and recorded his first studio album that same year. While other kids were learning about geography in a classroom, he was visiting the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and the White House. Continue reading →