When I was really little, I really wanted my ears pierced. My mother didn’t have her ears pierced, and my sisters and I found pierced ears no end of fascinating. But we weren’t allowed to have our ears pierced; my father thought it was gross. I don’t remember what the age was when the ban […]
Read moreI love presents. I am not good at them. I mean, I am not good at thinking of things that other people will like. And I am not good at buying them on time, or getting them in the mail on time. And sometimes I think of buying something for someone and that’s as far […]
Read moreyou wake up and you Just Know– before you even open your eyes– that you didn’t get enough sleep. you really hate your new haircut. you eat a breakfast that is simply overloaded with sugar, and you don’t usually do that, and then you pay for it. your car has something Really Wrong with it. […]
Read moreThis is our friend Levi. He is two. My father took this picture when he was here a few weeks ago. My mother and I were away for the weekend, and Bill and my dad and the children spent time with the phatted calf and his sons. We think he’s very funny. And a very […]
Read moreI had plans. There was that letter I needed to write– the one that is almost overdue– regarding our upcoming trip to Africa. There were two thank you notes, two bills to pay, a photo to take of Everett’s art project, photos to download. I hoped to send a quick note to my parents and […]
Read moreThe windshield was a little misty yesterday morning when we pulled out of the driveway for school. The wipers wouldn’t clear it immediately, so I added some washer fluid and very soon had the view I needed. But just to the left of my line of vision, there where the wipers stopped, it wasn’t just […]
Read morewill loan you books indefinitely. always knows how to get at the information you need when you yourself are Completely and Utterly Flummoxed. watches more television than you do. loves cupcakes and cake candy. checks your blog daily and even reads old posts twice and three times when there’s nothing new there because she really […]
Read moreEverett had five new words yesterday. Five. “Listing.” He was pushing the cart for me on our way out of Wal-Mart. “Mom, the cart keeps going over this way,” he said. “That’s called listing,” I told him, and told him what it meant, and told him how it’s different from when you are, say, listing […]
Read moreShe calls, even though she knows it’s my children’s bedtime, but Lynne calls anyway, because she’s in her car and on her cell phone and so she finally has a free minute. And even though the children are Really and Imminently Almost In Bed, I take the call anyway, because it’s Lynne. We will talk […]
Read moreMost days are seamless as water. Weeks, months– these things flow into one another like so many overlapping bays. We have no river mouth, no branching tributary to mark our place. We drift on the current unaware, and then suddenly find ourselves looking for landmarks in a place devoid of any landscape at all: “Did […]
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