My 84-year-old mother, Suzy, is getting a basketball hoop put in her driveway. Not for the grandkids, not for her neighbors, but for herself. She came to this decision in therapy last week when she figured out why she’d been so blue this past year. “I need to find my...

“Life in the liminal state asks us to carry a heavier mental load,” Dhruv Khullar, from an article in The New Yorker, August 22, 2021. We’re Inventing New Weather. That’s what my friend Nan said to me the other day. “We’re inventing new weather,” she said, as she made...

It’s all in the frame. That’s what my friend Nan said when I told her about the car accident last week, the way I barreled into the intersection, the collapse of the cars, the older Asian man who emerged from his vehicle intact. It’s all in the frame, she said, how I...

1. Almost all the sounds are yours. And the ones that aren’t - the dry crunch of leaves along the side of the house, they’re either animal or man. Man is the heavier step, the raccoon and the possum are more tentative, more low to the leaves. And if you’re scared, you...

It’s been hard to write full pieces this year, instead I must offer you the smallest things ... The slice of lemon cheesecake bought on Friday to eat on Easter Sunday - in a white box in the refrigerator - and the way I cut the sheerest slices from it each night...

One of the interesting parts of my work, and the work of anyone who works for themself, is sharing it with the world, marketing it. You can create a beautiful offering, but if you don’t let people know about it you’ll be the only one at the party. This is what I was...

I wrote this entire blog post in my sleep this morning. Which is to say, I dreamed that I had to make all these pies - savory and sweet - for a wedding, but that I’d put the task off - probably because pie making intimidates me - all those special things you have to...

Well, I finally got the courage to ask my 83-year-old Mother if she wanted to spoon with me in bed.  I’d been wanting to ask her to cuddle for days, ever since my daughter and I arrived at her house earlier in the week. My Mother’s house is small, perfect for one,...

(From a line from a Marie Howe poem of that same name.) Not the way I set my alarm for 5am so I could get up and make her coffee before she set off for 12 hours on the road. Not the way we sat across from one another at the kitchen table in the dark, her blond hair...

Prior to Covid, I was one of those people who liked to say things like, “change is inevitable,” and “everything is transient” - the words floating out of my mouth, making me sound like the good Buddhist I wasn’t. I wasn’t a liar, I just didn’t know what I was talking...