“He still doesn’t sleep through the night?” is what she said to me, and I laugh. He does not, this 2-year-old diplomat. He cries out, asks to be rocked, asks to be held, asks for a bottle, asks for a diaper change. While the world sleeps, he lures me into something different. I can’t accurately
Fall, then.
I haven’t written anything in a long stretch. It wasn’t intended, never is, the blinking cursor abandoned for house projects like clean garages and a re-carpeted bedroom. Yesterday, I gave up an attempt to patch a hole in the rubber hose in favor of a water balloon toss. This, the beat of our summer –
This week, the bulk of my daily conversations with friends, family, neighbors have been swollen with current events. We circle around kitchen tables and stretch our own small theories, thin solutions, blistered understanding. We clash. We talk ourselves tired. After a long while, everyone agrees to one thing and one thing alone: It’s complicated, but
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
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