As a kid, I faithfully attended summer camp year after year. My friends and I’d pile into a 10 passenger van with a reluctant youth leader behind the wheel, all of us belting songs in a decidedly off-key loop: Alice the Camel, Do Your Ears Hang Low. We’d pass Pringles from the back to the
There was a time I didn’t answer the door. — Once, when I was pregnant with Bee, an acquaintance I’d known from church asked if she could bring dinner over after the baby was born. Do you like Greek? she’d asked. (I love Greek.) But then, the baby was born and the visitors descended and
When your dad’s a photographer/filmmaker, you’re bound to pick up an interest sooner or later. It’s in the air, a synergy of moments and movements, of creating and curating, of noticing, of stillness, of shhhhh. The edit. — Can I have my own camera? she asks. Someday, I say, and I find myself asking Ken
I’m never gonna bite my nails again, Bee says to me over pistachios. I want to channel my mother, to say Never say never!, to offer a teachable lesson, but I choose to crack another shell instead. Yeah? I say. Yeah, she says. — I’ve been thinking about it, I guess. I’ve been thinking about
A few weeks ago, I’m boiling quinoa when I look up to see Ken and Bee parade through the front door. They’re lugging a bulging leather tote of books and waving a DVD over their heads in celebration of their recent library spoils. Mom! It’s Finding Nemo! Bee says. Harmless, right? Ken winks. It’s raining,
Things feel disjointed, that’s all. I walk the dogs. I order coffee black. I grocery shop. I answer texts. I chop carrots, find the missing shoe. I order finger paints. I fall asleep. Writer/mother/wife. I wake. — Bee likes to sleep on the floor. On the (rare) days in which she naps, I’ll have laid
Did you know emotions only have a shelf life of 90 seconds? That’s it. 90 seconds. In less time than you can walk to the mailbox and back, in less time than you can clip your fingernails, in less time than you can sauté an onion, your brain has effectively rid itself of the very