Emily Dickinson’s funeral procession came here, too

I am looking out at our backyard, which used to be an apple orchard.  I know this because the old woman who lives across the street was a little girl when this house was built.  The land belonged to the owners of the big white house on the corner.  They divided their lot and sold [...]

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Where do you come from, who are you, what makes you you? (Round 2)

This morning, I had some spare time after dropping Lucy at preschool, so I took the baby around the corner to the Cushman Cafe. It is one of my favorite places here. For years, it was an old whistle stop station; it was abandoned sometime earlier this century. A few years ago, [...]

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Could everyone just keep their bodily fluids to themselves?

I wrote, a few weeks ago, that I felt as if our family were becoming feral. Today has convinced me we are.
The morning included my straddling the dog, pinning his haunches between my legs, so I could pull a bloody tick off, and also pulling Lucy from the car so that she would vomit [...]

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Where do you come from, who are you, what makes you you?

I didn’t like the idea of growing up in the suburbs because they were so, well, suburban.  My childhood fit many of the clichés of white, middle class life in the seventies.  I played soccer on Saturday mornings, with oranges wedges at halftime and store-brand sodas in a cooler after the game.  My friends were [...]

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The Other Side

I think I am suffering from a serious case of hankering for greener grass.
 
For months, I have been complaining—to Steve, to myself, to anyone with the patience to listen—about how I am stuck inside.  On the bad days, it’s with two cranky girls; on the good days, it’s with two well-rested nappers.  But the end [...]

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The Nocturnal Family

We are becoming a nocturnal family.  Last night was a sadly typical case in point.  Elder daughter, not having napped, collapsed into bed at 7:30.  Younger daughter nursed herself to sleep, slowly, finally giving up the fight against sleep by 8:30.  I was in bed an hour later, expecting Steve shortly behind me.
 
But, then.  1:00 [...]

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Practicing, again

“This is the practice school of writing.  Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway . . . . You don’t wait around for inspirtation and a deep desire [...]

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Shakedown

Like everyone else, I’ve had money on my mind this past month.  I finally sat at the kitchen table, phone in hand,  to go through a periodic if unpleasant ritual: institutional shakedown.  Two hours, more or less, on the phone with bureaucracies that owe me money (or so I believe), attempting to rattle the refunds loose.
I started with [...]

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Excavations, again

I had always thought that recovered memories were about abuse.  Turns out that mine are about toys.
I’ve recently discovered the Take It Or Leave It shed at the dump, one of the silver linings of living in a relatively affluent and eco-conscious college town.  It’s not a very big space–about the size of the average [...]

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Excavations

It’s been a month of opening boxes.  Not sure if any of them belonged to Pandora.
First, there were the boxes in my new office.  I opened them at the beginning of August, almost a year to the day from when I packed them up back in Alexandria.  The brown cardboard had been gradually mildewing in the basement, [...]

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