“I don’t get it, “ I rant. Bob’s washing dishes while I toast pecans with one hand and whisk eggs and maple syrup with the other. Ula works at crimping a pie crust at the kitchen table and Saoirse is at the spice drawer, putting together a blend. “We cook and clean every day for […]
Selling it.
Become a Patron “You don’t show enough cleavage,” I was told by some cynical veteran writers one night after a bottle of wine. “You’ll never make it as a popular writer.” “You don’t do lunch,” I was told by a New York publishing insider. “You’ll never make it.” Long before I faced the brutal realities […]
Selfish
Selfish Bitch. To my mind, those are about the cruelest words that can be uttered to a woman. It isn’t that I haven’t encountered (or employed) more extreme vulgarities. But the venom in that accusation contains the most poison. It tells a woman who has stood up for herself or seen to her own needs […]
Happily Ever Right Now
November first is a special holiday for Bob and me. For us, it represents our first day of happily ever after. It was the day Bob was unexpectedly fired from his job. We were shocked. Embarrassed. Scared shitless. We had only closed on our house two weeks’ prior, and our first mortgage bill arrived in […]
Camping
Ula was reasonable the first time we told her we wouldn’t take her camping. That was about three years ago. I’ve learned that the key to being an always-(physically, if not mentally) present mother is knowing where my boundaries are. I’ll cook great food for them. I’ll read to them at night. I’ll spend my […]
Subsistence Empire
The floor of the car is littered with paint chips. Bob and I have been choosing colors for our newest Sap Bush Hollow enterprise: the vacation rental, to be located in the apartment over the post office, next to the cafe. We bought the post office building in our hamlet two years ago partly to […]
Delicious Math
Our family is sitting on the edge of Mallet Pond just before sunset. Dusky Doodles is beside the water, a look of perplexed consternation on her furry face. The September air is clear, and we’ve found a sweet spot, where if we call out across the way, our echoes return over the water as clearly […]
Must we eat the children?
I’m losing track of how many winters I’ve spent working on this novel. I think 2017 marked the fourth. And while that manuscript sits on my computer awaiting my attention, an outline for a new book is growing like a fungus on my desk, taking shape regardless of the lack of time and sunlight I’m […]
Chronic Hope
It’s 4 am, and I’m alone with a field of crickets outside my window screens, two dogs, one pressure canner, and 35 quarts of tomato sauce. It’s the week before Labor Day. Since 2011, I have a thing about canning tomatoes before Labor Day. It seems like we’re all learning special names that make our […]
August
I remember when August was defined by crickets pulsing through the day and night; by goldenrods stretching tall to meet the deep blue sky; by the blackberries that lured me off the roadsides, slicing my legs and arms as payment for their plump fruit. I remember how August was the calm before the storm of […]
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