the beauty of an ordinary life
I made school lunch for the last time, ever. "This is the last time I'm ever going to make lunch for you to take to school," I said to my daughter, as I folded a chicken and rice burrito and wrapped it up tight. "You're free!" she whooped. "Aren't you glad?" Seven years ago, I … Continue reading Something about that list from the working mother battlefield.
Welcome to segment four, out of eight (nine, if you include the intro), in the short series about the creative brief, a tool that can be used to bridge a perceived gap that gets in the way of cooperative, holistic enterprise, both in business and in life. Bonus for today's post? Recipe links at the … Continue reading Here’s the deal.
I'm writing this post at my writing table, which for most of its life has been a kitchen or dining table and bears all the markings to prove it. I'm writing in one draft, so there are sure to be typos and incomplete thoughts. Under the table, a big baby of a dog, all hundred … Continue reading How to weather a storm.
"This could be her last Christmas," my daughter said, speaking about the dog -- one of our dogs -- last Christmas, in 2020, the first pandemic Christmas. Another of our dogs had died earlier in the year, in mid-March before everything shut down. He, the one who died, and she, the one who remained behind, … Continue reading Thoughts go astray.
I have a friend who moved to back to Memphis a decade ago, after many years away. She rented a house instead of buying, unsure of how long she might stay. The neighborhood she choose was a “good” neighborhood by neighborhood standards, meaning it was relatively stable, a combination of starter homes and rentals that … Continue reading A story about parents.
Think of this, perhaps, as a sketch of something I'm still working out: The door jamb between our kitchen and the laundry room is unpainted on one side, littered with pencil marks -- initials, dates, hash lines that predate our moving in. It was one of the things clear in my imagining of our future, … Continue reading Underpainting.
The focal point for the day's work was "Wilson," a hospital glove that my husband inflated like a balloon and decorated with a Sharpie marker so it looked like a happy face. The glove's name came from the movie Cast Away, which we'd watched over Labor Day weekend, nestled with the dogs on our green-striped … Continue reading Something laborious.
She arrived at the door with a big paper grocery sack, handed off the goods, and left promptly, knowing full well what life was like with a toddler and a new baby at home. In the grocery sack were three Ziploc bags: Wide noodles; sauce; chopped Romaine (freshly chopped from a real head of lettuce, … Continue reading Something sentimental.
jenny's lark 