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
The sun is shining, a neighbor’s lilac bush is in bloom. When its Lilliputian flowers dance over to my front stoop, I can’t help but sense they’re carrying an early conception of chimera. As it stands, every idea I’ve pursued at length – plans snared to sites built to projects born to gigs proposed –
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
I’ve been toting around a notebook daily, minutely. At home, it sits next to swollen oranges and a few bruised apples. Otherwise, my coat pocket. Yesterday, Bee asks me if I write lists so I don’t forget things at the grocery store, and I tell her yes, but also so I don’t forget the grocery
I used to get dressed in the winter, used to rally against the cold and put together a somewhat-presentable uniform for my weekly grocery run or a library return. Once, lifetimes ago and certainly pre-children, I dressed myself up for an afternoon matinee, heels and all, a double layer of mascara. What’s the occasion? the