My dad’s 100th birthday would have been this weekend. 100! It seems incredible—so many years since 1923, so many things that happened in them. How different it must have been, how many things might have been not so different at all. These are the things I think I remember that he told me: behind […]
Parenting
I have a new mantra. Live your life, kids. Sure, have the chocolate muffin for breakfast. Wear the nice shoes on the playground. Use the fine china. Eat the marshmallow. Life is short. You might not get another marshmallow, despite what people tell you, so enjoy what you have while it lasts. My older daughter […]
In recent months, I’ve spent most of my time in Bremen, a coastal fishing village just down the peninsula from Damariscotta, Maine. Often my husband joins me. Bremen is Maine the way you think of it–our neighbors haul lobsters, dredge clams, pull kelp, and farm oysters. There’s an emergency doc who doubles as a vet […]
My daughter had her braces removed a couple of weeks ago. This was a big occasion for her and to mark it I told her she could have whatever heretofore verboten food she wanted. She asked for gum—her first in about two years. I handed her the pack when she came out of the orthodontist’s […]
When I was sixteen, my voice teacher predicted I would become a Jack of all trades. It wasn’t a compliment: We were in the midst of a fight, squaring off across the shiny black battlefield of her baby grand piano. She wanted me to concentrate only on singing. But I couldn’t imagine abandoning subjects like […]
They were dark forms scattered up and down the beach. One here, three there, a pair just beyond them. Their larger size distinguished them from the other shorebirds, drawing our attention. “What are they?” my dad asked. “Whimbrels,” I said. We were at Fort Stevens, a few miles outside of Astoria, Oregon, my hometown. My […]
There’s something wrong with men. I am one, I feel it. Something is broken. The last two mass shootings — two massage spas and a grocery store — might be old news by the time you read this, but it feels like an open wound. How are you doing? We say we’re becoming numb and […]
This time last year Elise and I were bellied up to a bar (remember those?) in Montana, talking about what childless dog-owning couples generally talk about: our pet. We’d owned Kit — or had she owned us? — for a year and change at that point, and we’d taught her the basics: to sit, to […]