the beauty of an ordinary life
“To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Our Christmas tree sparkled clear through Epiphany and beyond, lighting that particular corner of its room for so long that we were tempted to just leave it up. “When it starts to brown, we can…
An actual family dinner conversation: SON: [to MOM] “So, why’d you move all that stuff and mess up the big room?” MOM: “I need more space for my art and sewing and things. Maybe I’ll have people over, teach a class; who knows? I might even teach you to sew, so you can sew a…
The impetus for the experiment was a note from my friend Frank, who will be surprised, I suspect, by this news, mostly because he sent the note more than two years ago, but also because he will be generally surprised (though, I hope, not annoyed) to find himself mentioned here. Frank lives mostly on the…
Last we were together (three weeks ago? four?), we were talking about seeing and being seen. You are thinking, perhaps, that my memory is dodgy, that I’ve forgotten about the Frye boot story in between. What you don’t know is that I wrote the letter to The Frye Company at the end of February, weeks…
If there is a dish more emblematic of my cooking story than cheese soufflé, I can’t think what it would be. By now you’ve heard this tale, or bits of it, many times: my mother, who trained herself first by watching and later by reading, trained me to cook by virtue of the fact that…
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…
First, I should clear up a few loose ends, because things have been a bit disjointed around here lately. A few of you are wondering, because a few of you have asked me directly, how my writing is going, if I’m still working on any of the books I’ve mentioned starting. So, here’s something I…
For a handful of years in my early 20s my mother was my favorite date. She was divorced; I was yet to be either tethered or anchored. I had no boyfriend, no apartment, no career track, and no plans. Memphis was a temporary stop – a train station transfer, perhaps, if only I could figure…
