the beauty of an ordinary life
In the end, this is a kind of Mother’s Day story. But it starts this way: When he was 16-going-on-17 my friend David, the atheist, ornithologist, environmentalist, and retired Fedex pilot, hitch-hiked from his Hudson River home to the Gaspé, where he spent the first of many summers watching birds. It was 1956, year of…
In the back of her closet, behind the clothes, next to the dresser, were two shoe boxes, each of which held a pair of peau de soie-wrapped stilettos, one pair cream, the other bright kelly green, both size 7 AAAA. I’m certain about the cream colored pair, which were her wedding shoes. I’m less sure…
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…
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…
From the moment we master basic locomotive skills, we humans begin to pursue our independence and separate from our parents. It is as natural and ordinary and miraculous a process as any other in the animal kingdom – which is not to say that it is easy, for either child or parent. No matter how…
Yes, me too. From the very beginning, until the very end. Always. Because, from the beginning, When I was very small I slept in a tall, iron-framed bed, next to the upstairs front window in our big, drafty house that creaked in the night. When it was time for the lights to be turned out,…
Here’s something I love: I love it when I’m struggling with an essay and then, unexpectedly, I read something that both sends me into orbit and crystallizes my thinking. Bam! Block removed. For weeks months I have been stymied trying to write about some of the parenting advice I’ve gotten over the past 15 years…
