Last night I folded up a big Target box and put it in the recycling bin. The box was covered in sharpie words and crayon drawings, and has been a major focus of this house for several days. As I took it out, noticing that the air is positively swampy with spring as I did [...]
I didn’t have the best Easter I’ve ever had. On Saturday afternoon I began feeling sick, a nausea that intermittently escalated and ebbed. By 7 I was in bed with a fever, trying hard not to throw up. Sunday I woke up feeling somewhat better, though I remained vaguely carsick all day long. This made [...]
Five years ago we celebrated Thanksgiving with my parents and my father’s whole family (picture above taken after I had bathed the children and was about to put Whit, in his red fleece footy pajamas – sob – into the car for the drive home). Grace had just turned 4 and Whit was not yet [...]
A month or so ago, I was writing (incessantly) about the end of the school year and the way it triggers a cascade of sadness for me. I was thinking about it even more unremittingly, I assure you. One detail that kept popping up in my mind was the fact that graduation, one of the [...]
summer 2007 summer 2011 Still rocking the 3T seersucker suit. What happened to my baby? first day of Beginners, September 2009 last day of Kindergarten, June 2011 My baby is 6.5 He swims competently, though inelegantly. He reads short words. He loves Star Wars and Legos. He beats up on his sister. He makes me [...]
Yesterday was the summer solstice. I’ve written before of how important the solstice is to me. For all the years of my life my parents have hosted a party from 9 to midnight on the night of December 21st (awesome when it’s a Thursday, less awesome when it’s a Sunday). As midnight nears, a friend, [...]
This is, as I’ve said before (ad nauseum, you might say), a time of year tinged with sadness for me. The endings and goodbyes come one after another, waves lapping onto the shore of my life, eroding anything I have written in the sand. An extra farewell this year is the fact that Matt’s parents [...]
One night last week there was a big thunder and lightning storm. This was after a torrential squall in the morning and a tornado warning in the early evening. The weather has been swooping dramatically lately; maybe the restlessness in my spirit these days is just another manifestation of the vibrations I sense out there [...]
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I thank you god for this most amazing day. Thank you…. … to the lovely, loving crowds that made my 92 year old grandfather, celebrating his 71st reunion, smile more widely than I’ve ever seen … to the rain for holding off. The absence of biblical flooding [...]
From the first he loved Princeton—its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds… (Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise) Princeton takes reunions very seriously. Very. This weekend is my 15th. This will be Matt’s 3rd reunion and for the first time, we are bringing the kids. [...]
