Hoot

We have been going out to see the comet—to try to see the comet, that is—almost every night for the past week. I read articles to figure out where to find it, beneath the Big Dipper after sunset.  Most of the articles call it a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it’s true. Comet NEOWISE won’t be back […]

Summer Feet

At the beginning of summer, my feet often feel tender. There is a particular stretch of asphalt between the university parking lot and the beach that is especially pitted, and the sharp dark bits of broken ground make me cringe even before I step onto the road. I often choose a different route to the […]

A Little Less than Free

The kids across the street are my special little pals. They climb all over me and believe the lies I tell them. We wrestle, take walks, get ice cream, talk about poop. I really love these two little guys—I’ve known them their whole lives–and I think they love me, too. It would be interesting to […]

Mary Poppins Is An Anarchist In Strict-Nanny Disguise

“If this was a democracy, you would still lose,” is something my husband has told our 3-year-old after she objects to our decisions. I can feel the frustration build in her as though it were tightening my own chest. But in the world of Mary Poppins, she doesn’t have to take that kind of adult […]

Redux: My Daughter, the Dinosaur

In August, I took my almost-four-year-old daughter to the dinosaur galleries in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. The ceilings were lower and the clientele was shorter than I remembered from my own childhood, but the essentials were the same: the bones, the horns, the talons, and best of all, the enormous teeth. The better to […]

We were warned

I am so angry, so sad. Today I drove my two children to the first day of a weeklong day-camp with a nature theme. They are learning about local species, pressing flowers, that kind of thing. The teachers expected that the kids would spend most of the day outside in nature. Instead, the kids will […]