We rose before dawn, in the dead of winter, when the only light was the moon’s reflection on the Nebraska snow. We lived in a small, four-room guesthouse – a generous term, as the “guesthouse” was a two-story garage, the top half converted into living quarters: two bedrooms, each barely big enough for a bed,…
Category Archives: Master of the house
Rooted.
Twenty years ago, give or take a few weeks, on a cold, rainy Saturday, I was living by myself in a guest house a few blocks from the Joslyn Castle in Omaha. It was an old, historic neighborhood – not unlike my neighborhood in Memphis, today, with houses in varying states of renovation and residents…
Babies, tarnish and dust.
The part of this that is a story, at the beginning, is mostly true and very short – hardly even a story, it’s so short. But it’s true nonetheless, in the important ways, and amended appropriately because it isn’t mine. A number of years ago a dear friend was hosting Thanksgiving dinner. More specifically, a…
Labor days.
It is Labor Day weekend, summer’s last hurrah. It’s the weekend many parents, mostly mothers, heave a sigh of relief. We made it. As Motherlode’s KJ Dell’Antonia wrote back in June, the 104 days of summer vacation are a nightmare for working parents, particularly those with no extended family willing or able to help. It’s…
In vino veritas.
Oh, screw it; it’s 5 o’clock somewhere. Let’s talk about wine; everything else is too depressing. In our many family moves during my youth, there were a few belongings, in addition to clothes, dishes and furniture, that always made the journey from one stopping place to the next: the Encyclopaedia Britannica set; the heirloom Christmas…
If I can cook dinner, so can you.
The cold truth is that there simply is not enough time to do it all. For this very reason, as you may remember, once upon a time, I used to make a weekly dinner plan. Which is what I’d really like to talk about, just for a bit, not too long. Also, buried at the…
The no-snow weekend.
Here are 22 things I did this weekend, not in precise order: Watch everyone get snow, except for us. Well, it seemed like everyone. Exercise, because there was no snow to stop me. Dammit. Try to finish the last 35 pages of Between the World and Me, which is absolutely, positively gut-wrenching. Walk around the…
Someday never comes.
It is late on the third day of the new year, long past tipsy midnight kisses and the initial fortitude of resolutions. Day three; this is where the rubber meets the road. Three-hundred-and-sixty some-odd days ago, I made my plan for 2015. And I mostly kept it; mostly. Even with a few ups and downs.…
