high school
Maddie and Motherhood
On October 26, 2017 | 0 Comments

Healing Maddie Brees and I are headed to another book club tonight. I am very much looking forward to it. It’s tricky, though: when invited, I always tell my host that I recognize the liability. Having an author present for her book’s discussion can decidedly hamper dialogue and limit expression: how many attendees will be willing […]

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Of Teachers and Why We Love Them, My Favorite One, and Two Birthdays
On September 13, 2017 | 0 Comments

I think we’ve seen the last of them for this year: the first-day-of-school photos that spill down our social media screens. Darling children in their new clothes and unscuffed shoes, grinning for the camera and holding their signs: Amelia, second grade. Dylan, fourth. And the less-than-darling, I’m-too-old-for-this children, holding signs or not, wearing I-couldn’t-care clothes […]

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Two Questions
On November 2, 2016 | 0 Comments

The text had two questions, the first from the daughter, who is ten: “Are you related to Robert Louis Stevenson?” And the second from the mother, who is old enough to be a mother: “(The Daughter) is reciting her most favorite tomorrow… ‘The Swing.’ I’ve been coaching her to try to recite it without the […]

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The Absence of Precise Answers
On October 26, 2016 | 0 Comments

My family and I attended a play last night: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at PlayMakers Theater. It’s difficult to say that this is a wonderful play, or even, perhaps, a good one. You don’t witness a drama about false accusations, terrible lies, and gross injustice and feel good about it afterward. Which isn’t to say that the play doesn’t resolve. It certainly resolves–but […]

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Morning Drop-Off
On September 17, 2016 | 0 Comments

I drove the girls to school on Thursday, a late-summer, light-filled morning. It was just the third week of school, day thirteen if we’re keeping count, which might not be a good idea.     The conversation en route was cheerful. Chatter about driver’s ed, gladness that it was already Thursday, and the painted parking […]

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Reunion
On October 30, 2012 | 2 Comments

I went to my 25th high school reunion on Saturday. Of the handful of reunions our class has held over the years, it was the first I’ve managed to attend. We all know how it goes: in the fullness that becomes our every-day lives, escape to something like this might be unattainable indulgence, especially if– […]

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