Ours was a week that was both glorious and terrible. Bikes and bistros, disagreements and diaper rash. For every moment of beauty, it seemed, a futile moment trailed. Laughter around a bonfire, the bite of a mosquito. Tortoise hunts, a bloody fall on the rocks. Trust gained, trust lost. Small and ill-timed furies shouldered until
Of all the questions I am asked on the regular, my daily routine is (hands down) the most frequent. And oh, how I get it. Daily routines are the structure for everything we do, every habit we establish, every ritual we keep. I believe in routines wholeheartedly, that a good one is as close as
The seasons that run smoothly for me are, unsurprisingly, the ones that involve focus and order. The routines, the boundaries, the guidelines – I’m wired for it all. Once, on a hot July day when I was no taller than her mailbox, my aunt announces a trip to the fair to pet the pigs, try
Early this week, in a Chicago hotel room, I order French toast for eating in bed. Two rarities: sugar and silence. I’m punchy with anticipation. But then it arrives, and the plate is hard to balance on my legs, keeps tipping askew, the knife in need of a stable surface for cutting. I move to
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
I’m rarely one for how-to or self-improvement books, opting instead for advice unearthed in the twists and tangles of any given life. I find that I learn more when I have to work for it, when its interpretation is my own, a flattened landscape mined deeply for meaning. Memoirs have always been my terrain of
We hadn’t meant to talk about the ethics of consumerism, but alas, the curiosity of a 5-year-old is rarely capable of stifling.
Well, no, I can’t exactly claim the same perspectives (nor groundbreaking insights) of Virginia Woolf. But truthfully, I’d never deny the beauty of a room of one’s own. A space for writing or thinking, for arranging things just-so, for practicing what it means to make a small, seemingly insignificant mark on this world – or
