Life, unadulterated.
It was my oldest child’s first piano recital and I had front row seats next to my mom. I didn’t invite my father or sister or sister-in-law or anybody. He just started playing five months ago– how could this turn out? Maybe for the next recital. Or the one after. You know, the one where…
The last time I was in Spain was with my boyfriend (the man who would later become my husband). We stayed in Barcelona because he liked the 1994 movie. Somehow we got a hotel in the seedy part of Las Ramblas, where cheap souvenirs were hawked at every turn and our most (un)memorable meal was…
2016: We had a brand new puppy, a 13-month-old, a 3-year-old whose Hello Kitty birthday party was exactly two weeks before, and a 6-year-old in kindergarten who was memorizing sight words and obsessed with hexbugs. On an ordinary Wednesday morning at the end of April, we were supposed to begin another school day with our…
“Be free where you are.” -Thich Nhat Hanh Have you ever thought about the way we cling to the idea of perfect? A perfect body. Perfect teeth. Perfect home. Perfect marriage. Perfect life. We want the new car smell to last forever. The wedding party to keep going. Our children to stay tiny and sweet.…
I’ve always had an eye for the good stuff. (Pictured: me reading a Harlequin trashy novel at the age of 1. Upside-down.) I turn 37 in a few hours (Monday). I am usually a person who likes to celebrate a birthday. I enjoy buying my own presents and planning my ideal day, but this…
There are so many reasons to feel disappointed by life. The job you didn’t get. The writing submissions that were rejected. The relationships that didn’t last. Personal failures. Natural disasters. Political shutdowns, bad behavior, a series of unfortunate events. The list is endless. Last weekend I felt like an Uber driver as I shuffled the…
I try not to talk about politics on my blog because that’s not why people come here, but politics are actually a big part of who I am, and in this essay I share with you a personal story about my late husband (who had earrings and wore a trenchcoat when I met him) how…
