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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A month ago, there was a murder on our block. The memory of the incident feels very fresh, still, and surreal in the way that events that you haven’t conceived of happening do. Our block is a longish one, but the murder happened only a few doors down, across the street from the playground where […]
We arrived home after our annual Northeast Regional Christmas late last Friday. We were overladen with gifts (Our car, which had seemed quite a nice size a year ago, struggled mightily to hold two car seats and their respective occupants, a small dog, all said respective occupants’ lounging and sleeping gear, four suitcases, many, many […]
One of those heady, grey days. Wind gusts up to 55 miles per hour. The maple leaves outside my room are dancing like mad. The little kids at the school behind me have finished recess; the bigger ones at the school across the street are still going strong. It’s loud — a torrent of yips […]
Pregnancy, to me, is like holding my breath: the longer it progresses, the harder it is to concentrate on anything besides its eventual end. My son has cropped up at the edge of the bed, one hand curled around the ancient Motorola cell-phone, long dead, that he carries with him everywhere. He is slurping on […]
It is a measure of how swiftly I now fall asleep that I am only eighty percent through The Secret History, which I bought over a week ago and have reading in fevered subway and elevator snatches and those drowsy bedtime minutes ever since. I bought it after reading Esquire’s marvelous, scintillating oral history of […]
A number of threads have been floating around my head of late, and I don’t know whether I’m forcing something by connecting them, but here goes. When I worked in the entertainment division of Conde Nast, the walls of our floor were adorned in machismo inspirational quotes. “Don’t half-ass two things; whole ass one thing” […]
My son is a genius. He’s got two pink blocks in his hands that he is trying to fit in his mouth. One day he will be a great architect, or a renowned city planner. Although, he’s at a bit of an impasse right now. He jabbers encouragingly at the right block and then the […]
