Update: Curious about homeschooling? You can follow along our own homeschool journey right this way! It happens like they say it will: you blink and she’s nearly 6. Long limbs, tangled hair, tiny bruises polka dotting her shins from rope-climbing, tree-jumping. I cut her pants into shorts for the onslaught of spring, smile at the
I’ve reached the age in which my nieces and nephews are graduating from high school, where gift-giving calls for a waffle-maker or a mini fridge rather than a Matchbox car, a stuffed teddy. It is jarring, always, for the adult to find she is the adult. I’d imagine it is even moreso jarring for a
It’s a running joke in our friend circle that I’m impossible to speed up (surprise, surprise) and Ken is impossible to slow down. A single glance at an empty calendar square and the man’s found a way to fill it with four conference calls, three house projects, two oil changes, one heaping pot of curry
Ken, out of town. In the evenings, I survey the sink and realize every dish accounted for is my own, or one prepared by me. No smoothie blenders on the drying rack, no spatulas dyed turmeric neon from late-night curry. I spend the week cooking recipes he hates or has grown tired of. Tuna for
Ask me how I know a woman is fully capable of leadership and I will tell you of a 3am morning, in a darkened nursery, rocking a baby with croup. His airways are swelled, he must sit upright. You rock and rock and rock, his body heavy with sleep, with relief, with you. Once rest
A daughter, running for the dining room register as the heat kicks on, perching atop the floor vents until her bare legs turn tiger-striped with indentations. We sit together, side-by-side, quiet. She asks me to count her freckles.
In the grocery store, my second year of college. I’m standing in the checkout lane, a cart full of “necessities” – a new shower curtain liner, shaving cream, Special K. I scan the rack displaying magazines and gum, flip through the latest issue of Glamour. A woman with my grandmother’s earrings waits in line behind
On the night of a bad day, I wonder if people truly change. If we’re all just out here screwing each other up or if there is, as I’ve been taught, a capacity for a better way. Can the envious toss away layers of green? The angry encounter peace? Can the yeller stop yelling?