one small place

Do you know those evenings, those very long evenings when you look at the clock at 5 p.m. and can’t believe there are still two whole hours before you can realistically put the kids to bed? Tonight, both girls were overtired—whiny and tantrum-prone. And there is nothing like a wailing, possibly-coming-down-with-something baby and a huffy,…

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what we can count on

I’m embarrassed to say that I had never read anything by Ellen Bass until last week, when one of my lovely students (thank you, Ann!) e-mailed me this poem after it had been featured on Writer’s Almanac. (I’m reprinting it here with the author’s permission.) After Our Daughter’s Wedding While the remnants of cake and…

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mea culpa

I haven’t been much of a blogger recently (as you very well know), and I’m not only sorry, I’m embarrassed. I’ve never let myself go this long without at least one skimpy post. And it’s not that I haven’t thought about blogging; I’ve thought about it every day for the past two weeks. I thought…

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a discovery

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…

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two sisters, two winners

My dear sisters didn’t follow my directions. They were supposed to read the haiku entries, then confer and choose a winner. But they each chose a winner, so now I have two winners of the first Mother Words haiku contest. (Not such a bad thing–I loved all of them!) The winners are: Emmie and Soon…

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mastitis haiku contest

In deference to the breastfeeding gods, I am hosting the FIRST EVER mastitis haiku contest right here at Mother Words. How to enter: Think hard about mastitis. Write a haiku about it. Type your haiku in the comments field of this post. Note: You need not have experienced mastitis to write a haiku or to…

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8 weeks old

It’s hard to believe that Zoe is already 8 weeks old. I’m not sure exactly how big she is, but it’s somewhere around 11 pounds. She seems huge, wearing clothes that Stella wore when she was five months old! As hard as these infants months are for me, I feel myself grasping, trying to hold…

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Knopf poetry and Sharon Olds

As you all know, it’s National Poetry Month. And I hope you all know that Knopf will e-mail you one poem every day for the whole month! Yesterday, what was sitting in my inbox? The wonderful “Looking At Them Asleep” by Sharon Olds. So perfect for me right now. It ends: oh my Lord how…

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on empathy

I’m wondering what would happen if we could—and would—regularly imagine the lives of people, real people in our country and in our world, who live lives beyond our own experience. What would happen to our public policy, and foreign policy, if we didn’t seemingly lack the ability to imagine lives? It’s impossible, it seems, to…

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poetry and concentration

I haven’t been able to focus on much of anything during the last week. I had a good report from my doctor: baby is okay, take it easy, no exercise, nap every day. The good part, of course, is that the baby is fine. The difficult parts, for me, are taking it easy and not…

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