The day was looking good. Kids breakfasted and lunches bagged, they went off together to school. I had only one item on my calendar before the late afternoon’s rash of meets/games/matches, and yes, it appeared that a good writing day was ahead of me. An excellent writing day. I love those. Writing is, after all, […]
Read moreForm A few weeks ago, I took my kids to the Alexander Calder exhibit at Duke’s Nasher Museum. This was the second of our “Mom-days,” a little summer practice I instituted last year when it became suddenly clear to me that, if I did not deliberately claim just a wee bit of my children’s time […]
Read moreA small mountain remains: some research papers and two days worth of exams. It will take me hours to scale this mountain, but these are hours I can count, a discernible number– so different from the unknown and countless hours of grading I do over the course of the school year. I have some boxes […]
Read moreIt is Wednesday, 5:09 p.m. We are nine minutes late. It is the middle of May. Only 6 and a half days of school left– unless you are a fourth grader and going to Camp Don Lee on Monday and Staying For Two Nights. She heaves her guitar from the back of the van and […]
Read moreThey’ve asked me to write them a poem, my boys have. In four-four time. And it will not, in fact, be so much of a poem as it will be song lyrics, lyrics written for the music they have already written during one of their music sessions in the basement. They are on their instruments […]
Read moreI’ve always loved reading aloud to my children. I began, in fact, when William was still in utero (yes, I was one of those mothers), but took it up in earnest when he was newborn and we were alone in the house together for hours at a time. Rather than watch mind-numbing television during those […]
Read moreLately I’ve been in the garden. I love this. I love the smell of the dirt and getting dirty and leaving a patch of earth better than when I found it. We have a wonderful yard here in North Carolina, one that was landscaped long ago with several different garden beds and Places For Planting. […]
Read moreI vividly remember turning eight. It’s probably the first birthday that I remember with real clarity. We had just moved to Pittsburgh, back to the United States after living in Japan. So we were in the house I grew up in by that time, and the rest of my childhood years are informed by […]
Read moreIt was all we were about on Saturday: Emma Grace’s birthday party. The guests would arrive at one and be gone by three, and from the time we got up in the morning until the very minutes they arrived, it was all streamers and icing and gathering things for games and setting up the punch […]
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