Category: Covid Files
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Sometimes It Blows Shut and Sometimes It Blows Open
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…
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codes so subtle that they change their whole meaning in half a line
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…
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everything held together by tacit agreement that it would
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…
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every memory is turned over and over again
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…
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Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is
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…
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Sabes Que Ropa Me Queda
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. …
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Remains of the day
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…
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Like a tree in which there are three blackbirds
Thursday, May 7th “Turn out the light?” Buffalo girls won’t you come out tonight “Turn out the light?” And dance by the night of the moon “Turn out the light!” The light is the sun. Perry wants it out at night, so he can sleep. I’m constantly explaining my own powerlessness. I can’t fix the…
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While the stem is winding one of those little lines about itself
Wednesday, April 15 Yesterday, it rained and rained. Sheets, sprays, steady drizzles. A warm rain, and when I ran on the wooded road that is really a long driveway, the forest was a conspiracy of greening pines and new ferns. A full-blown waterfall tumbled busily down the slopes. I thought of Bridge to Terabithia. Not…
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The Truth Is
Monday, March 30 I don’t know what a swallow looks like. A medium-small bird whose wings moved radially flew over the duck pond, and I’m calling it a swallow. I didn’t know wings moved like that, in those tight little circles. It was a poignant bird in a close sky. There’s a war on and…
éclaircissements 