“The pen is mightier than the sword.” It was an odd bit of Shakespeare for a farmer/reproductive physiologist to quote to his daughter. I’m not sure when I first heard those words from Dad. It may have been in kindergarten, when I clobbered a bully on the head with my lunch pale. Spoken words had […]
Hurricane
It’s September. I want to write about New England Asters and their gracious willingness to sprout up beside goldenrods; about gazing at them from a pond’s edge, finding endless joy in their electrifying color. I want to write about my first mouthful of buttery-bright delicata squash; or the quiet hum as homeschooling reclaims our house; […]
FLUSHED: When parenting dogma goes down the toilet
Bob and I took the girls backpacking in the Adirondacks this week, so I didn’t get a chance to write a post. That said, my brother and his wife are expecting their first baby later this fall, and as a result I’ve been thinking a lot about this story I wrote back in the spring […]
The Perseids
I was seventeen when I discovered the shooting stars. I was so enthralled that my best friends from high school, Jonathan and Louigi, fellow band geeks, came up to the farm. We spent an August night in our sleeping bags on the hillside behind the barn, watching the Perseids, trying to think of ways […]
Property Marker
“The chamber pot marks the corner of your land.” In 1979, every farmer in West Fulton over the age of 60 knew about the distinct marker that defined the boundary of our property. I’ve no idea how long that rusty pot hung from a branch, or who hung it there, but it seemed a more […]
My Indian Virtual Assistant
“I need an Indian virtual assistant.” “Not American?” Bob has just returned from cleaning the vacation rental after our guests checked out. He cracks a beer and flops down on the glider beside me, waiting to see where I’m going with this. “We’re supposed to seek a more favorable exchange rate.” Two summers ago […]
Mellow.
“I gotta go, ‘cuz Mellow’s getting anxious.” Mellow, a charcoal Bichon Frise, pulls at the end of his leash and attempts to reach Bob and me with his forepaws as we walk up a strip of crumbled sidewalk in the city of Schenectady’s Stockade district. His owner, talking to another fellow on a stoop, […]
The Fifteens
“Forget acting. I’m going to be an eco-saboteur.” She turns fifteen this month. These are the first words out of her mouth when Grammie brings her back to the cafe from wilderness survival summer camp. I think I’m holding my own at the espresso bar in her absense, but she gives me a light hip […]
What would Henry David say?
“For my greatest skill has been to want but little.” When I read this line in Walden, I repeated it out loud. I wrote it down. I emblazoned it across my brain, forged it into my heart, considered tattooing it across my chest. I was a mother of two by then, but they were […]
Selfish Inner Goddess
“I don’t know how to parent you!” These words shock me as they shoot from my mouth on this steamy Fourth of July morning beside the edge of Mallet pond. Ula’s back is to me, facing the water. She’s been with her friends all week. She’s been with friends all summer. But they are not […]
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