Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a holiday when we honor our war dead and, more generally, our deceased loved ones. (And when, less poignantly, we kick off the summer travel season with barbecues and beer.) I’m spending today with Husband and the kids. We’ll probably take in our town’s parade with its [...]
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I just finished reading Julie & Julia, Julie Powell’s blog-turned-book about the year she dedicated to cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I came into the book with high expectations. Eagerly engaged in my own happiness project, I thought I’d be inspired by reading about Julie’s. Moreover, I really [...]
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Growing up, we had an expression in our family that I think originated with my grandmother: “Bad, but honest.” This expression was usually deployed when a child either readily admitted to a wrongdoing (“Kristen, did you knock over your brother’s Lego tower?”…”Yup!”) or provided an opinion that lacked social grace (a hopeful, smiling “Kristen, do [...]
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Last week I read Kelly Corrigan’s bestselling memoir, The Middle Place. I was deeply moved by Corrigan’s hilarious and heartbreaking account of balancing her roles as daughter, wife, and mother within “the middle place – that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap” and during her battle against breast cancer. But what resonated most [...]
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Welcome to the third installment of our Life After Yes book club! (Looking for our discussions of the previous sections? Click here!) If the first section of Life After Yes is all about Identity, and the second section is all about Prudence and Predictability, then the third is about Honesty and Authenticity. And those two [...]
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…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to [...]
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Once upon a time there was a girl. A brand new mom of two. Her teaching career on pause, she stayed at home with her newborn and 20-month-old sons. She loved those boys. She loved her Husband. She had a lucky life. She knew she did. But she felt sad a lot of the time. [...]
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To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to await occasions, hurry never… this is [...]
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This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up, and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze [...]
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As you probably know by now, I am an avid reader. My adoration for Anne Lamott and Judith Warner notwithstanding, I am pulled quite strongly to fiction. But despite my love of a great piece of literature and my newfound passion for writing, I cannot imagine writing fiction. I am currently rereading Harry Potter and [...]
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I just finished reading The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s novel about African American maids and the white families they hold together in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. In the novel, two maids and a well-to-do white woman collaborate to write a book about the experiences of these domestic workers. Throughout The Help, all three must alternately reveal and [...]
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I have been in five book clubs since graduating from college and I still haven’t quite figured out what they’re all about. My first book club was a pleasing melange of my work and college friends. We were all young and living in New York, and enjoyed our monthly meetings over dinner and wine at [...]
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And now another selection from Kristen’s Little Shop of Metaphors… I told Husband recently about Anne Lamott’s metaphor (suggesting that writers carve out space to write just like woodpeckers drill holes in trees to make their nests) and the post I wrote about it. His response? “Don’t woodpeckers peck to pick grubs out of trees?” [...]
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Flying home on Sunday afternoon after another week away, I was actually a bit sad to see the trip come to an end. That is unusual for me: I usually prefer to stay home than to travel. I enjoy planning vacations, mapping out an itinerary, but, as often as not, I find myself counting down [...]
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“My therapist, Rita, has convinced me that every time I say yes when I mean no, I am abandoning myself, and I end up feeling used or resentful or frantic. But when I say no when I mean no, it’s so sane and healthy that it creates a little glade around me in which I [...]
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“‘Here, what do you think of this proposition? Men are built of words. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?’ At this he leaned forward and slapped my knee heartily, as if we were a pair of thrown-togethers at the beginning of a long train ride, discovering our common love of bookish pursuit. ‘Men are defined by [...]
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Dear M and S, After your shower on Saturday, thoughts of you mixed with the forced air of the heater to warm me on my drive home. About an hour after I left you, a squall filled the air with snow; the flakes danced horizontally, then vertically, seeming to grow up from the highway. And [...]
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“It was strange to have been reminded of Simon while standing in this guest cottage on the Blackwell vacation compound, strange to think how different this place was, surely, from the pea farm where Simon’s family lived. He would, I imagined, find the Blackwells indulgent and vulgar and self-satisfied, and they in turn would find [...]
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In this week’s edition of Six Quick Picks, I offer up a list of the best books I read in 2009. I hope you’ll join in the conversation and offer me and the Motherese community the names of some of your recent literary finds. 1. Home, by Marilynne Robinson (2008): Robinson won the 2005 Pulitzer [...]
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During my recent Holiday Hiatus, I took a break from daily writing. I fired off a few trifling posts, set up Blogger to post one each morning, and then closed my laptop, giving it two weeks of true hibernation. Up to that point, I had made time every day since launching Motherese to sit down [...]
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Because a holiday season packed with Hanukkah, my birthday, and Christmas just wasn’t enough for Husband and me, we decided to get married, six years ago today, on New Year’s Day in the city where we met, fell in love, and lived for several years – both as students and as adults. I knew then [...]
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“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the [...]
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