I can barely open the door before it throws itself in my face, rattling against its frame. I rein in my voice like I’m working a pulley and talk to the door. “I said hurry and eat, brush, and go to bed. I’m leaving the house.” I can’t help flipping the pitch at the tail:… Read More War and Peace
She gargles the fire in her throat (upstairs), makes lunch (downstairs), dusts (both floors), washes the sheets (downstairs), reviews geography with her son (upstairs), heats the castor pack (downstairs) hacks into the waste bin, does her saline wash (upstairs), empties the trash bin (downstairs), gets her boy more blankets (upstairs), checks the soup (downstairs), does… Read More Men and Women: Oh, the Flu
His scream sucked me cold out of sleep. It had just turned midnight and as the dream evaporated, I did not know I would rest again only after dawn. My son had woken—yet again to spit thick, cloudy coughs into a waiting mountain of Kleenex. Tennyson cried, holding the ice pack down on his head,… Read More Where Beauty Dare Thrive
“There are no two words in the English language more harmful than Good Job,” intones Fletcher, the monomaniacal music instructor in the film Whiplash. Isn’t good, after all, the enemy of the best? Fletcher’s psychopathic devices sucked me right into the vortex of the questions I ask as my son’s teacher. How much do I… Read More A Tiger’s Pursuit: Mastery
Go on. Pinch me. You are so kidding me. The house is still but for the clicking of the keyboard. The men are on their first father-and-son overnighter in the mountains. I am home alone tonight. In case you don’t quite see it: over three years as a human milk bottle, I’ve also served up… Read More My First Time
Night has pressed her hand to your eyes. You fly dragons over magic rivers and lead clone armies through red dust of Mars. I follow your brows, lashes, these long limbs, hands that build Lego tales and castles, draw warbirds, roll out sixteenth triplets; these hands feel older now. Whom will they hold? I watch… Read More You Didn’t Know I Kissed You Tonight
Why do we marry? I mean, why do we want to? I think eyeing that green, green grass of marital bliss as singles, we think more of the physical and emotional intimacy and the charming notion of making house. Those who live by convictions of faith or tradition that prescribe sex only within marriage may… Read More Finale: Why We Love
Math lesson: “Mom’s money is Mom’s money and Daddy’s money is Mom’s money.” ======= Boy: Counting, recounting the money he earned folding laundry this month. Saving for a tablet. “$7.50. I have a long way to go to get to $200.” Mom bites lip, looks up at ceiling. He doesn’t know she borrowed the $120… Read More Money in My House
When my father died, I kept the wooden box in which he had stored his tools. Dad worked as a plasterer, so the box is scarred and coated in plaster dust. But this box reminds me of all that I learned from him about earning a living. From Dad, I learned that loyalty and pride… Read More My Father’s Box
A Holistic Journey 