Recap
It’s officially fall. We’ve made up one last batch of hummingbird food, but there aren’t any birds to eat it. The local farm has switched from selling petunias to stocking mums and is having a sale on sauce tomatoes. The crazy school-to-track-to-dance-to-soccer-to-flag football season has started. But most importantly, I’ve switched my purse. Not from…
Missing, One Summer
Have you seen it? It is covered in lazy beach days and afternoons by the pool. Give me a call if you find it. I’d really like it back.
I Did Not Cry
Today was the first day of school, and it’s tradition for me to drop off the kids and then bawl my eyes out. Three years ago, when my son transitioned from kindergarten to first grade, I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. The second grade teacher on parent duty had to pat…
See you later, alligator
There’s a saying I keep on my bulletin board, the place where all the schoolwork fit for display is hung. It says “When you’re a parent, the days pass slowly, but the years fly by.” I’m not a ‘quality time’ parent. I’m in it for the details, not the days at Disney World (although those…
How I'll Be Spending My Summer Vacation
If I squint, I can just see the end of this book I’ve been working on for such a long time. It’s there, misty and unformed, but close enough to touch — hopefully sometime in the next few weeks. After I’ve written those blessed last words — The End — I’ll take a week or…
Think Less. Write More.
After umpteen months, I can finally see the end of this novel. It’s there, just out of reach, perhaps three chapters away. I’ve been writing those final lines at baseball games, at dance rehearsals and while grocery shopping, carving them out of the air, inscribing them on my mind. But I haven’t put them on…
Promise
It’s spring in New England, at least for a little while. Summer vacation is right around the corner. I have a lovely craft post all planned — you’re really going to like it — but between baseball and soccer, baseball and recitals, baseball and concerts and more baseball, I haven’t actually written it yet. (Also,…
Internal versus External Vision
One of my neighbors is a fireman. I don’t know if it is part of his profession or not, but I’m always amazed by what he sees. We’ll be standing in front of my house, talking, and he’ll reach down to palm a candy wrapper some rotten child has left on my lawn. We’ll stop…
Adjust Your Attitude
The news has been so bleak this year — tragedy after tragedy. It can make you wish for a redo, a chance to go back to December 31st and live it all again with the foresight and strength to make everything better. But that only works in fiction. In real life, the gray cloud of…
Shiny
We’re about 6 weeks from the end of school right now, and the activities are crashing over us like big waves at the beach. There’s not a lot of time to catch a breath, and before I know it, this year will be gone. I have mixed feelings about this, but very little time for…
