Category: Memoir

An edlerly dog with braced legs stands on grass with trees and hills in the background, looking into the camera

Pandemic Diary: Easter Sunday

Published on by karin swann-rubenstein1 Comment

Mourning is love with nowhere to go (…but everywhere).

It has been less than twenty-four hours since we buried our dog. It is Easter Sunday. I am sitting in our bedroom with the windows and doors open, listening to a channel of chamber music I found on iTunes. I find myself in the chancel of a European cathedral where the echo of a heavenly choir coils around buttresses on its way up to the filtered, multi-colored light. I am grateful for the time to reflect. On death. And rebirth. Continue reading “Pandemic Diary: Easter Sunday” →

A red-furred bat hangs upside down from a slender branch, eyes open and looking into the camera

Pandemic Diaries / 2

Published on by karin swann-rubenstein2 Comments

The Great Invitation: On Learning to Listen to Bats and Pangolins

It is a full eleven days since we arrived at our sanctuary ‘shelter’ in the California hills. In eleven days our business — a nature-based retreat center serving non-profits, yogis and nuptials — has nosedived. The first wave of cancellations was followed by a second, then the third. Within four days, almost a third of our annual revenue had disappeared and my husband, Jon, after no small amount of hand-wringing, shuttered the business. In a matter of days, reality as we knew it had come to a grinding halt. Continue reading “Pandemic Diaries / 2” →

An elderly dog, looking anxiously into the camera stands with legs braced on snowy ground

Pandemic Diaries

Published on by karin swann-rubenstein2 Comments

Bodies In Motion

At some point, Jon woke me up. “You need to figure out what’s up with Lulu,” he said. “I took her out two hours ago and she’s up again.” I rolled over, looking out the window to assess the likelihood of falling back to sleep again after the task. Judging from the darkness of the sky, the first thought of sunrise hadn’t reached the horizon. We were still in the thick of night.

Lulu is our seventeen and a half-year-old ridgeback mix. Two months ago, she collapsed after the two-hour drive back home to Berkeley from Boonville, CA where my husband and I own a retreat center. It took Lulu two days to recover to her feet after the drive and we decided, with no small degree of sadness, we would not subject her to the car again. Lulu would not return to the hills she’d known for most of her life where she‘d bounded and raced across tall grasses, half deer, half-bird and returned to hunt lizards on the lawn for hours. Life would be simpler for her in Berkeley, less stressful at least. Continue reading “Pandemic Diaries” →

Close up of carved face of a man with closed eyes.

Kissing Patriarchy Goodbye

Published on by karin swann-rubensteinLeave a comment
The last time I spoke to my father, he was dead.  The OPPORTUNITY changed my life.

It’s been six years, now, since I last spoke to my father. Mid-summer, July 15th, 2014. It was in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and he was lying on a gurney at a funeral home — dead as a doornail. To hide the incisions of his autopsy, the back of his head and throat were carefully wrapped over with portions of the white sheet that bundled the rest of his body. He was propped up at an angle, his face available for viewing and the area where the sheet was raised over his arm, exposed the solid, stubborn fingers on his right hand. Continue reading “Kissing Patriarchy Goodbye” →