Dear Q, How is it possible that this picture, at the best 21st birthday party ever (sunflowers + live music + beer + magic light = heaven) was taken sixteen years ago? No, no, no. Impossible. Also impossible: that bleached jeans and huge nubby sweaters ever seemed like good sartorial choices to me! I wrote [...]
Bone 1. Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape – and so, last week, when I found on the beach the ear bone of a pilot whale that may have died hundreds of years ago, I thought maybe I was close to discovering something [...]
The universe has a way of timing things just right. Just days ago I was sad about summer ending, about the closing of this magical time with my children, these three months dotted with highlights and plenty of tiny moments in between. And then they became monsters. Oh, wow, is it time for school. Something [...]
I’ve written almost incessantly about my particular struggle to live in the present, about the way my near-constant preoccupation with both yesterday and tomorrow quite often entirely obscures today. On Saturday morning I felt a simultaneous impatience for fall to arrive and a desperate sorrow that summer was ending, and the moment perfectly captured all [...]
I have a few areas of definitive, even spectacular, parenting Fail. Food. Both of my kids are terrible eaters, Whit far worse than Grace. I never make them finish their food, and generally believe that no child will charge in the presence of food. Shoes. There will come a day this fall when inevitably the [...]
When I’m at home I almost always run the same loop. A creature of habit through and through, I am. The route takes me past the used bookstore that I used to go to as a kid with my sister and father, past a kid-friendly restaurant where I ate when both of my children were [...]
We are at the Basin Harbor Club in Vermont. This is a marvelous place for families, totally oriented towards kids. Tonight was a barbecue with all kinds of activities for the children – bouncy castle, face painting, games, prizes, hayrides, etc. Towards the end of the evening, Grace came running across the field towards me, [...]
Right now my head and heart are running dry. I feel exhausted in a bone-deep way. The words are eluding me. But this kid? Well, he’s priceless. He can be serious, but usually, he’s not. The material keeps on coming. **** He didn’t fall asleep last night until 9:30, and for about half an hour [...]
I’m thrilled to feature one of my favorite posts by one of my favorite bloggers today. Corinne from Trains, Tutus, and Teatime agreed to let me share her post, which for some reason (since that title doesn’t appear anywhere) I’ve called “Monsters” in my head. This is a classic example of Corinne’s ability to “see [...]
My father’s brother, Jonathan, died in the 80s at the age of 36. I don’t remember very much about his service (I was 8 or 9) but I do remember my father, brown-haired and glossy-eyed, wearing a dark suit, standing at the pulpit of the church and reading High Flight by John Magee. His voice [...]
