mothers' words speak volumes

Check out the Star Tribune’s parenting blog, Cribsheet, where I guestblogged about my Motherhood & Words class. Writing from four of my students will appear on Cribsheet this week, one essay each day, beginning today, so please check out these wonderful, emerging voices. They make me proud!

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pining

Yesterday Stella and I were running errands and I mentioned that Gahgee (what she calls my dad) was going to baby-sit because D. and I were going to a party. She got all teary and said that she didn’t want us to go and didn’t want Gahgee to come over. And then she said, “Are…

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garrison revisited

A month ago I posted about Deborah Garrison’s new book, The Second Child. I had the pleasure of speaking with Deborah on the phone a few weeks ago, and you can read my review of The Second Child and an interview with the author at mamazine. Enjoy!

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there is nothing like

becoming dizzy with blue sky and rustling leaves and swaying trucks as I stand among birch trees, staring straight up lying in bed at night, listening to the eerie call of loons, back and forth, across the lake a daytime moon holding watch over a field of newly-plowed hay Stella’s excitement prior to her first…

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reading recap

I have been relaxing up north (which is how we refer to Northern Minnesota), so I’m only now posting about the first (and hopefully annual) Mother Words reading. First, if you are ever in Minneapolis and have a chance to go to a reading at the Open Book, where the Loft Literary Center is housed,…

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mother words: a reading

Hey, for all of you local writers and moms and dads, please join me tomorrow night at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis for Mother Words: A Reading by Mothers Who Write. I will be reading from Ready for Air, and I will be joined by Nanci Olesen, public radio commentator and host of MOMbo,…

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8 things

Okay, I was tagged by Kyra at this mom to reveal eight things about myself. Here it goes: 1) When I was in college and working at 3M one summer, I electrocuted myself. 2) When I was in college and working at 3M one summer, I electrocuted myself AGAIN. Seriously, same summer, same day. With…

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where voice resides: the allergy diaries

There are a few essays so well-written that I could use them to teach each element of craft. Jill Christman’s “The Allergy Diaries” is one of these essays. “The Allergy Diaries” describes Christman’s infant daughter’s anaphylactic reaction to cow’s milk and the aftermath of this discovery. That is the situation in the essay. The real…

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a choice, a responsibility

Last night I was watching the evening news—something I try never to do—and there was a story about the sextuplets just born in Minneapolis, at the same hospital where Stella was born. They are now on warming tables in the same children’s hospital where I sat for weeks, staring at my daughter. The coverage of…

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creative cross training

On Friday night, D. and I went to see Figaro at Teatre de la Jeune Lune. We don’t do this sort of thing very often, and that afternoon I almost wished we weren’t going. I had a gazillion things to do, I was exhausted, and we were babysitting Stella’s cousin. Our house was strewn with…

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