Claire Bidwell Smith

Dear Baby, You are 22 weeks along in my tummy now, with another four months to go, and you’ve been making your presence quite known. Not just visibly (yes, definitely that) but also with all of your seriously active kicks and acrobatics. Pregnancy is so different this time around — not uncommon for second pregnancies Read more…

After my father died I found myself living alone in his condominium in Orange County. The days following his death were lonely ones. After having lived with him for so long it felt impossibly strange and disquieting to come home to those rooms by myself. I turned on music and opened the patio doors to Read more…

Sure, maybe it's just because I miss him. Or maybe it's that they really do have the same eye color. Or perhaps it's simply that my little daughter with her jowly cheeks and practically-bald head actually looks like an old man. Whatever the case, sometimes I look at Veronica and I get a flash-sense of Read more…

I can’t believe that the wedding is over. That it all actually happened and is said and done for now. I don’t mean that in a mournful way. I think if we had waited a year, it still would have felt immense and swirling and over faster than we thought. I mean more that I Read more…

Last night I went to the first session of my three-week meditation workshop. I tried meditation for the first time last year, and for a while I was going to private sessions with a wonderful instructor at LA Dharma in Westwood. The experience I had in the couple of months that I was practicing was Read more…

Last night Greg went to dinner with his uncle and cousin and I opted to stay in by myself. The second the door shut behind them, the house quiet except for the spatter of rain against the window panes, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I spent an evening at home alone. Read more…

I’m back to the thinking about the present moment. I’m generally pretty good at staying present but sometimes I really forget about even trying. Yesterday I went to visit one our patients who lives in an apartment building by the lake. She’s in her 90s and lives all alone and has no family. She’s quite Read more…

I had the loveliest weekend. Really, it was one of the best in a long, long time. One of Greg’s older brothers was in town from Cleveland with his wife and their 3 1/2 month old baby. They arrived on Thursday and stayed with us until yesterday morning. I made goat cheese enchiladas on Thursday Read more…

This afternoon I went to see a new patient who was admitted over the weekend. She was in her eighties and dying in a nursing home. That was pretty much all I knew. I had received a voice mail from my supervisor telling me that the patient’s family was struggling with the impending loss and Read more…

This morning I met one of our volunteers at a nursing home so that I could introduce her to one of our patients. It was bitterly cold today, the wind whipping down across the lake, chilling me through in seconds each time I got out of the car to hurry to my next destination. I Read more…