It is early one weekday morning and I am catching up on emails. I hear some kind of unrest percolating in the living room, some sibling kerfluffle that often comprises our family palette. My daughter stomps by my desk, snorting and mad. She cranks down the tie on her bathrobe and pumps her fists, shaking... Continue Reading →
My daughter woke me at night because she had a stomachache. I knew what that meant. I placed a bucket at her bedside. I gave her a glass of water. She leaned back into her pillow. “Mom, I think that made it worse,” she croaked. Suddenly, and comically to my surprise, out of her mouth... Continue Reading →
When our first snow fell last month, I knew it had been ages since I’d filled a plastic bag with frozen dog turds—those palm-sized anal asteroids that I dig from the flattened, cratered grass with my fingernails. I watched anyway as my kids scrambled outside to make an igloo in two centimeters of snow. Maybe... Continue Reading →
Sometimes, when I’m peeling beets by my kitchen window, I imagine that if I finish quickly, before the squirrel nibbles that stash of nuts on my patio, the world won’t end in cataclysmic disaster. I take my massive, sludgy uncertainty about everything from my body to the way I’m raising my kids and ball it... Continue Reading →
After folding lights around each branch of our Christmas tree, my hands are patched with sap, lifting dog dander and curious little hairs from the furniture. I carefully unwrap all the glass ornaments we acquired when we lived in Germany—painted baubles, VW beetles, frosted toy trains, and breasty Bavarian mädels with their lederhosen-clad partners. The... Continue Reading →
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