The first thing that occurred to me, as I watched the woman strike the child, was that surely I was not the only witness. A limpid, early summer evening, on a cul-de-sac of tightly spaced houses — surely other families were watching, from their back patios, their screened porches, their postage stamp front yards. At […]
What was the name of the game we played as kids, where we’d crawl into our sleeping bags head-first and then, upright, attempt to topple one another? Caterpillar? (But those are horizontal.) Whatever it was called, I could never manage more than a few seconds of it. The bag would close in on me; my […]
A year and a day ago we packed up our car and drove to Vermont. For a day it was spring and then for a long while it was winter. That period feels like the airclay I got my son: you can mound it up or flatten it out or stretch it loooong. A year […]
The afternoon is settling in fast, that nice, milkweed light you get in early winter pooling into my bedroom, the windows muffling the whipping noise of the cars and occasional truck as they exit and enter downtown. In Brooklyn, I always wrote (and, during quarantine, worked) in my bedroom, but in the suburbs, I have […]
The hole started as a prototypical answer to a hypothetical. As it grew — in length, mostly, but also in depth, it became a joke. Now, I’m not sure. At its deepest, the hole is nearly as tall as Brady. I knows this because, when he is digging, I can see just the top of […]
I write this sitting in a fake leather chair on an Amtrak train headed back to Boston. The train is quiet but my head is not. Michigan seems like a dream to me now. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you (substituting weary, or bone-weary for the original adjective). After three days and four […]
My dog died, and a week later, my second son turned one. I got Gita the year I turned sixteen. A quid pro quo, with the quo my being kinder to my mother’s boyfriend. A smart negotiator, I asked for the quid upfront, and rapidly abandoned any attempt at the quo. I found her in […]
I have an office now. A genuine room of one’s own. It has walls of planked pine painted periwinkle blue and a ceiling that only just clears the top of my head. Most of the walls in the house are stone plaster, meaning you can’t just go hang up any old thing — but not […]
June 17th Who lives in New York? People live here. Crossing guards who conduct the blaring Mac trucks and motorcycles and antsy travelers of Flatbush Avenue with impassive grace but break into smiles and coos at the glimpse of a baby live here. Excavators and enormous cranes and dump trucks and cement trucks live here. […]
Sunday, May 24th A load of laundry strewn across the guest bed, including all the winter socks I’d meant to bring with us. Dishes in the dishwasher, cleaned March 19th but mildewed by May 22. The pork chops we’d planned to have for dinner stuffed pell mell into the freezer. The parchment ponytails of […]
