"Look at me. Even though I'm safe, back in my comfortable home, I'm still acting like a refugee--scavenging, foraging, guarding my small space, waiting out the end of the war. I'm going to survive, I know that. Someday I will talk about this calmly and insightfully. And for a good many years after that, I…
It's easy to get swept away by the everyday: barking dogs, disrupted sleep, the feeling that you are waiting for something that continues to elude you. I realized recently that our lives in Delaware, or what I've come to refer to affectionately as "Limbo Land," can seem fairly one note; this may be because, as…
A burgundy leaf fell from the Japanese maple and landed upright in a spinach artichoke dip. It was chilly in the shadow under the tree. Soon, there would be the long winter, cold and white. An erasure of this night, the garden. -Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies) When I last left you, it was high…
Alice in Wonderland birthday parties; Spanish-speaking nannies; healthy children harvesting perfect blue chicken eggs from the back-yard coop; homeschooled wonders who read by age three; flat, tight bellies; happy husbands; cake pops; craft time [...] homemade lip balm; tremendous flat pans of paella prepared over a beach campfire. What sort of sadist is running these…
I open up this time so I can feel all the other time around it. I can see it in sharp focus: a difference of this or that, the light or the dark. I am choosing the light. -Sarah Gerard (Sunshine State) Adulthood is a funny thing. You may think that you've attained this…
Jimmy and Crake graduated from HelthWyzer High on a warm humid day in early February. The ceremony used to take place in June; the weather then used to be sunny and moderate. But June was now the wet season all the way up the east coast, and you couldn't have held an outdoor event then,…
Afterward, late, when he was alone and the fire of mesquite wood was dying, it came to him that he should take on the task of dispensing these interesting, nay, vital facts gleaned from the intelligence reports and the general press. For instance, the struggles going on at the top levels of the Mexican…
I am a keeper of flocks. The flocks are my thoughts and all my thoughts are sensations. I think with my eyes and my ears, with my hands with and with my feetand with my nose and my mouth. For to consider a flower is both to see it and smell it and to eat of fruit is to understand its…
Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I...do what? Clean floors, wash clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping, play with the children in the play areas, bring them home, undress them, bathe them, look after them until it is bedtime, tuck them in, hang some clothes to dry,…
Every week, by the time Friday rolls around, I itch to get out of the house. I realize this may sound a little dramatic, especially because I am a self-described (and proud) homebody, but when you combine the cabin fever of winter with the reality of rolling out of bed in your pajamas and, within…
Dining with Dostoevsky 