on family
When my children and I drove to Florida for their Spring Break, we talked, as the miles rolled beneath us, about seeing their grandmother, and their grandmother’s dog Buddy—a dog who is beloved to Magdalena and Teo, who has been beloved to M & T since they were toddlers. (Buddy earned an acknowledgement in my [...]
on family
The quaint gray house across the way with its peaked roof and moss-covered wooden shingles is abandoned. For the last few days, the firefighters—eight of them—have converged with their trucks in front of the house to train for the job they do. They are there now, in their bulky black suits with the bright stripes [...]
on family
I used to take my feet for granted. There they were at the end of me, serviceable, pretty enough when pampered (which was rare), increasingly achy but resilient. I was self-conscious in my skin in certain seasons. Sometimes I felt like my body was a dress that didn’t quite fit. Or my hair or eyes [...]
on family
This past week I sat down and read While He Was Away in galley form. Actually, I read it through for the second time, having read it through for the first time as an ARC—i.e., as the Advanced Reader Copy that my wonderful publisher Sourcebooks sends out for publicity purposes. I don’t have many ARCs [...]
on family
Yesterday, 1/2/12, I took my daughter shopping at Forever XXI. She had a gift card. I had a desire to be with her. At my age, at her age, the irony of Forever XXI is not lost on me. But never mind (at least for a paragraph or two). For a few hours, we were [...]
on family
Today Ben delivered the keys–their whites shiny and new and flush to the wood beneath. Ben leveraged all skatey-eight of them on their big board back into the mouth of our piano. Again, that bird can sing. I scooted home from work to meet Ben and watch him return our piano to its full self. [...]
on family
I just put the Lladro in the china cabinet. All the lily white angels are in place on the top shelf, chorusing china cheek to china cheek. Sound the timbrel and lyre. Below, is the shepherdess with her companionable sheep, the knitting girl who looks so much like my mom did back in 1926, the [...]
on family
I wasn’t going to write about this, not yet, not today or tonight. Especially not this late at night, without forethought. But then I saw that my friend Amy Timberlake bravely posted: ”yeah, I miss my dad today,” and my heart got heavy with all that I haven’t acknowledged. There are so many reasons not [...]
on family
today i started emptying our cluttered china cabinet, in preparation for filling it up again, only more so. It’s spring, or an illusion, here in Chicagoland. Out with the old, in with the new. Or in this case, in with the other old. Only child that I am, I inherited a fair amount of fragile [...]
on family
The other night, I lay in bed, reading to my eight-year old son, Teo. Teo is a great reader to himself, as well, but nights, he still likes to curl up with either Greg or me, and listen. On this night, we were well into The Battle of the Labyrinth, book four of the Rick [...]