This morning, as I headed somewhere, car keys in one hand, iPod in the other, I found myself yanked momentarily away from my earnest, busy intentions[1]by a glimpse of gold peeping from the green foliage in the corner of our front yard. And then, before I really knew what hit me, I was balanced precariously at the edgeContinue reading “Harvest: An Ode to Sun Golds”
Category Archives: girleen snippets
Elbow Room
Yesterday, I had a kid home from school with strep throat. She’d already been to the doctor, so she was kinda sick, but not as sick as she had been, and what she wanted to do more than anything else was hang out on the sofa in her pajamas and watch The Hunger Games. WhatContinue reading “Elbow Room”
All Saints Day (A Recap)
The numbers: First toddling trick-or-treater (Strawberry Shortcake and a sleeping sibling berry) — 4:45. Pieces of candy, doled out one by one — 450. Candle in the jack-o-lantern snuffed and the porchlight turned off because we’d given every single Tootsie Roll away — 7:45. This morning, the sidewalk is littered with cast-off fangs, a confettiContinue reading “All Saints Day (A Recap)”
Pubs, Sultry Summer Edition
The Summer 2013 issue of The Massachusetts Review, which includes my story “Plenty” is out and on the metaphorical stands. You can subscribe here. “Plenty” might be suitable for the season, which around here, we just call “Thick of Farmer’s Market” (we also call it steamy-hot): All those years ago, when the guy with the guitarContinue reading “Pubs, Sultry Summer Edition”
The Recital (Part One)
I started this blog six years ago, when Elder Girleen went off to elementary school. Last night, she “graduated” from fifth grade. I could attempt to wax eloquent about the passage of time, because that’s what we parents do, but to paraphrase Benny, a character in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad — nostalgia isContinue reading “The Recital (Part One)”
Fall, Once More
Surely I didn’t let this much time go by since I wrote anything down here — I must, between June and now, have written down something! Be that as it may — it does little good to worry at my words, or at their absence. It is a new school year, a blank slate. My oldestContinue reading “Fall, Once More”
Ode to My Neighbor’s Eggs (and My Daughter’s 9th Birthday)
An egg only two hours old is truly a beautiful thing. The ones my neighbor’s hens —her girls, she calls them — lay are an even, pale brown and a faint, barely-there blue and a few of them are dusted with a sprinkling of darker freckles. Some of them are larger than others. Some areContinue reading “Ode to My Neighbor’s Eggs (and My Daughter’s 9th Birthday)”
Things, Pressed into Service
If you classify yourself as a “reader” in the simplest sense of the word (ie, one who reads), and probably even if you don’t, sooner or later it happens — you find yourself on the tour of the House of the Famous Writer. More specifically, you find yourself peering over a velvet rope into aContinue reading “Things, Pressed into Service”
The Dance
At the gym, the soundtrack of my younger days is spilling so loudly from the speakers it erases thought, and everybody seems to be running in place. Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, Nirvana’s Come as You Are, and then — Good God Almighty! — the theme song from Friends. I am lifting weights, but really,Continue reading “The Dance”
Treading Water: or, The Deep End
This is it, then. The lovely nutmeat of the summer. The musty smell of tomatoes pulled from the vine; the scent of sun-baked dirt before the afternoon’s rain storm. Sweat that teases the hair at the nape of Elder Girleen’s neck into tendrils; the beautiful, enveloping ache of refrigerated air when we finally get theContinue reading “Treading Water: or, The Deep End”
