The new issue of Shenandoah, which includes my story “The Fossil Record,” has just gone live. The working title for “The Fossil Record” was “The Nanny’s Tale,” and I guess that just about covers it: The Davenport’s beautiful house is filled with beautiful art. Art Molly loves to look on. So for a while, theContinue reading “Pubs, Spring 2016 Edition”
Category Archives: motherhood
Read it and Weep, or What Have We Wrought?
“The Overprotected Kid: A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer…” (The Atlantic, April 2014) The gap between what people fear (abduction by a stranger) and what’s actually happening (family turmoil and custody battles) is revealing. What has changed since the 1970s is the nature of the AmericanContinue reading “Read it and Weep, or What Have We Wrought?”
Slice of Life
I haven’t read the book yet (it comes out today), but this is from Sunday’s NY Times Q & A with Debora Spar, President of Barnard and author of Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection: “….I raced home from work, I was putting dinner on the table, and I was racing outContinue reading “Slice of Life”
Elemental: Water
As far as this blog goes, I’ve written about the swimming pool, that staple of summer life, here and here and here and here. In Eggs for Young America, my collection of stories, life required (among other things) fraught swimming-tests for twelve-year-old girls (“Deadman’s Float”), pilgrimages to Lake Michigan (“Grand Portage”), and nests of water moccasins encounteredContinue reading “Elemental: Water”
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”
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”
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”
The End of the World as We Know It?
So… Elder Girleen’s elementary school is holding a Walk to School Day next month. Because… Well, you know. Kids don’t. Walk to school. We don’t. Our excuse: we live 2.14 miles from school, and there’s no bus (another story). I tell myself that if we lived only a tenth of a mile from school, we would,Continue reading “The End of the World as We Know It?”
The Future
So yesterday I was at Elder Girleen’s second-grade classroom for the monthly birthday commemoration, which consisted of a cheer and a song for the three kids with January birthdays.* On the surface, that was all that was taking place. But because I just spent almost two weeks away from the usual routines of my life,**Continue reading “The Future”
