I just made it through another five-day stint as a single mom, which I hope explains my recent silence. Stella is also on a reduced pre-school schedule this month, so I have even less time to sneak away to my computer. When to blog? When to blog? When D is gone, it’s the extra sleep…
Read MoreLast night, Stella cried out in the middle of the night. When I went in to check on her, she was kicking around and couldn’t get comfortable. This didn’t surprise me. How could she possibly be comfortable when her bed was filled with baby dolls and stuffed animals? There was hardly any room left for…
Read MoreD will be home tonight. He’s been gone for ten days with his new job. I doubt the timing, with Zoe just four weeks old when he left, could have been any worse, but there was nothing we could do about it, so he went. Stella missed him a ton. Yesterday morning, she was watching…
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I wrote about dialogue and posted excerpts from two writers whom I think do dialogue exceptionally well: Yusef Komunyakaa and Cheryl Strayed. But then I went on to say that Cheryl Strayed was an unlikable narrator, and Cheryl Strayed actually read the post. I hurt Cheryl’s feelings, and that wasn’t my…
Read MoreI’m sure some of you have already read Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française. For those of you who have not, you must go out and get it. Némirovsky was a Russian Jew who had lived in Paris for twenty years by the time the Nazis invaded France. She was a successful novelist and mother to two…
Read MoreIn May, I participated in MotherTalk’s blog bonanza for Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys. Now, I hadn’t actually read the book—I’m not a boy and I don’t have a boy, which of course you all know—but I was inspired by MotherTalk’s prompts: recall your own childhoods and describe some of the…
Read MoreLast night I was faced with the task of hemming Stella’s princess dress. (I know. It’s utterly shocking that she has chosen to be a princess for Halloween.) But I couldn’t muster the strength to go down in the basement and get the sewing machine and try to remember how to use it, so I…
Read MoreLast night I participated in writers revealed debut virtual book club, which was so much fun. There were about eight of us, and we all read Meredith Hall’s wonderful memoir, Without a Map, and then we called into the show for a Q&A with the author. Hall became pregnant at sixteen, was completely shunned by…
Read MoreOh why did I do this to myself? Why? For class tomorrow, I’m having my students read Susan Ito’s “Samuel” and Suzanne Kamata’s “You’re So Lucky.” I chose these pieces to spark discussion about point of view, emotional distance, and writing about heartbreak. But I’m not going to talk about how talented I think both…
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