Parenting priorities, dreaming dragons, cleaning conundrums, conflicting needs. Stress, and relief.
I Thought This Would Be Easier
I thought this would be easier, but I’m struggling. I had planned to write my “Five Year Plan” in keeping with Kristen’s wonderful idea to reflect on our past, our present, and our futures so we may also recognize how fortunate we are to have a future. And in doing this, to spread the word […]
Five Years Back, Five Years Forward
Yesterday, Kristen at Motherese offered a wonderful glimpse into her life – looking back at her past five years and how much her world has changed. Her personal journey has taken her from teaching school in New England to becoming a writer and mother of three little ones, living in the Midwest. As a teacher, […]
Circling
I don’t want to write today. I don’t want to read, to research, to converse, to put on a happy face. I don’t want to shower and dress. I don’t want to pace my rooms, to walk my neighborhood, to clean another goddamn pile, to open the door to the fridge and slam it shut, […]
Triangle
It is the low-pitched and rolling brogue that startles me, and I look up. I hadn’t heard him enter the living room. “Surprised to see me?” he asks, cocking that irrepressible eyebrow that makes a woman’s heart beat faster, like everything else about him. I’m not sure what to say. I am surprised to see […]
Sometimes, You Give In
I am dreaming of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the face I see is the one I remember with clarity: she is bright and youthful, her hair pulled back and secured by a head band, her earnest expression we come to know at the beginning of her husband’s first presidential campaign. And in the dream I […]
The Code
Some codes should not be broken.
Calling for the Tow Truck
“You have an idea parked in your head now,” he murmured. And he was right. It was one of those perfectly reasonable and measured conversations, romantic even, that had taken a strange and unanticipated turn. What he intended as simple disclosure of something in the past triggered a surprising chain reaction. In me. It was […]
Slicing the Onion
You know the recipe by heart and you move through the preparations as usual. You grab the red onion and slice through its textured flesh with a practiced hand. You begin the quick business of cutting rings or dicing squares, and your eyes begin to burn, to tear uncontrollably, and you’re caught off guard. So […]
Be Careful What You Wish For
Is it love? Is it money? Is it just a day or two to yourself? Is it something harder to generalize, impossible to articulate, or too private to admit to? Do you have a foolish little dream – or a glitzy big one – something from childhood – shelved and dusted off, shelved again, only […]