Yesterday afternoon Grace asked me to play American Girl dolls with her. I told her I couldn’t right that minute, but that we could before bed if she wanted to, though she’d have to forgo TV. No problem, she enthused. Later, as we were playing, she mentioned that most of her friends at school don’t [...]
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 [...]
When I ran cross-country, in high school, I’d invariably have so much energy at the end that I’d sprint the last half mile. Or do a cartwheel or two towards the finish line. My coach, understandably, was not enormously fond of this behavior, and urged me to run faster earlier on because I obviously could. [...]
I love this post by Mom 101 about The Myth of Doing It All. Yes, this is a topic we’ve all been over. It is not new. What I hadn’t thought about before, though, is what she shares, paraphrasing an essay by Tina Fey in the New Yorker: When you ask a working mom about [...]
Saturday morning dawned clear and cold. I took Grace and Whit out to breakfast at our favorite diner while Matt slept in. Later, we went to meet some friends to walk around the reservoir in our town. Our friends have a five year old son and an 18 month old daughter. Slowly, we circled the [...]
Last week I read Susan Piver’s beautiful writing about the importance of sadness and sighed, nodded, and cried at the same time. She was expressing exactly what I was trying to say, unsuccessfully, the other day. I wasn’t having a bad day, though several friends called me and asked if I was OK after reading [...]
I am cruising headfirst into a very busy few weeks, mostly because of my real job. This week alone has involves a trip to California (round-trip in one day) and a long day in New York (6am shuttle down, 9pm shuttle back) on Friday. The days I’m in town are crammed too. I am missing [...]
The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold. -Ranier Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus 1,4 More beautiful and thought-provoking words from the lovely blog, A Year with Rilke. Isn’t Rilke, in his characteristically simple but powerful imagery, talking [...]
I read Jo’s gorgeous post, Everything Under the Gaping-Mouth Moon with a wince of recognition. She writes – beautifully, as ever – about the dissonance she experiences between her own “singalong life” and the horrors that she knows are out there in the world. “While children starve in North Korea, I barter with mine about [...]
I’ve been thinking an awful lot about achievement, and the Race to Nowhere, and the ways we hide from our lives. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how complicated it gets when the ways you hide from your life are applauded by the world. For me this has mostly been true: whether it’s running or studying [...]
