matt, liz and madeline

by JHSEsq on January 13, 2010

Some­times a post — or even an entire web­site — ren­ders the reader com­pletely unable to artic­u­late the emo­tions invoked by the piece. So it is with many of the posts pub­lished by Matt Logelin at matt, liz and made­line.

How I man­aged not to hear about his site until very recently, I don’t know. But some­how I clicked from link to link to link one foggy evening while on vaca­tion … and even­tu­ally I found myself mes­mer­ized by images of a beau­ti­ful lit­tle blond girl named Madeline.

If you, like me, have not vis­ited before, you must begin your explo­ration of the site here: What hap­pened? And like me, you will prob­a­bly find your­self click­ing from entry to entry to entry, read­ing Matt’s raw, hon­est, heart-wrenching account of how he came to be a sin­gle father rais­ing a beau­ti­ful lit­tle blond girl with­out the love of his life at his side.

We take so much of our daily lives — and the peo­ple in them — for granted, but Matt can no longer do that. When Made­line was just a few weeks old, he poignantly pon­dered her aca­d­e­mic future:

but what’s gonna hap­pen
when she needs help
with her
eco­nom­ics home­work?
(or sci­ence, math, psy­chol­ogy or any of the other sub­jects her momma stud­ied with ease)?
that easy answer…
“go ask your mom.”
to her ques­tion…
“can you help me with this?”
is out the door.

Matt says he doesn’t believe in signs, but the Post of the Day Award goes to an entry I found in the archives, orig­i­nally pub­lished on August 13, 2009. An obscure brand of wine — one he had only heard of because friends gave a bot­tle to him and Liz, sug­gest­ing that they savor it dur­ing an anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion in “a year that won’t hap­pen” — sat on the shelf of the bar Matt walked into. $22 per glass. A con­ver­sa­tion with the wait­ress. Another life touched. The story told to his faith­ful read­ers who now num­ber one more than they did the night I clicked my way to his site.

Don’t miss Matt’s photo-rich posts about their recent trip to India.

Click your way to the Post of the Day: about an hour ago … You’ll be glad you did. Then go hug whomever it is that you love.


Tech­no­rati Tags: , ,

{ 1 comment }

The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy

She describes her­self as “a free­lance writer and stand-up comic who is both good at Jeop­ardy! and annoy­ing to have at par­ties.” Jelisa “J-Money” Cas­tro­dale has been blog­ging since June 2005, describ­ing her small town South­ern upbring­ing which included sit­ting on her grandmother’s porch lis­ten­ing to “mix­tapes on my Walk­man (includ­ing clas­sics by Heart, […]

Read the full article →

We’re At Dad’s That Week

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for We’re At Dad’s That Week

White lies. We all tell them for myr­iad rea­sons: To spare a friend’s feel­ings, to avoid becom­ing embroiled in con­tro­versy, to keep a loved one out of trou­ble … There are times when white lies are appro­pri­ate and harm­less. And other times when the truth must be told, no mat­ter how brutal […]

Read the full article →

Speaking from the Heart

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for Speaking from the Heart

Ah, the hol­i­days are over. The Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions have been taken down and stowed away until next Thanks­giv­ing (or, for some of you, before the big turkey feast).  All across the land, a col­lec­tive sigh of relief can be heard as family’s return to work and school, resum­ing their nor­mal daily rou­tines (and dining […]

Read the full article →

Southern Fried Momma

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for Southern Fried Momma

Some­times I lose track of time while sit­ting here in front of the com­puter try­ing to decide upon a post that deserves to be the Post of the Day. It hap­pened again this evening after I hap­pened upon South­ern Fried Momma. And at one point, I was laugh­ing so hard that my oldest […]

Read the full article →

Miriam Pauline’s Monologue

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for Miriam Pauline’s Monologue

She’s an Amer­i­can liv­ing in Europe who home­schools her two young daugh­ters, Jewel and Flower. She is also a cross-stitcher, “wannabe writer, reader, reflec­tor, teacher and lover of Scrip­tures,” in addi­tion to being a quil­ter. After read­ing only a few of her posts, it is evi­dent that her moniker, “The Piece-Maker,” is a […]

Read the full article →

Julie’s Jewels and Junque

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for Julie’s Jewels and Junque

Nom­i­nated by Mimi Lenox at Mimi Writes.
The story of a goal accom­plished, a dream ful­filled, a jour­ney home com­pleted, an injus­tice righted.
The post hon­ored today fits into all of those lofty cat­e­gories. But more impor­tantly, it is about a daugh­ter of a mem­ber of what Tom Brokaw termed “The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion” who wanted to […]

Read the full article →

Halftime Lessons

by JHSEsq
Thumbnail image for Halftime Lessons

The tag line selected by Jay for his site, Half­time Lessons, says a lot about him and his writ­ing: “Pre­pare all you want … fate doesn’t care.” He offers wry and fre­quently hilar­i­ous obser­va­tions about his life. As he explained last August, he is 40 and com­ing to grips with the fact […]

Read the full article →

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.