Just Another Tired Mom Late For Practice and Out of Dinner Ideas — The fantasy of Motherhood wrapped its unrelenting fingers around my heart and wouldn’t let go. Then came the tears, negative pee sticks, fertility treatments, and endless wails of grief and longing. Finally, a baby boy; joy, light (poop, exhaustion), beauty and peace. Two years later, a miscarriage. Then another miracle…

First date jitters at a gallery — She sipped the wine and rolled it around her tongue, absently adjusting her jacket over her arm. Her shoes pinched, but the date had promise. And she’d wanted to see an O’Keeffe. She stopped in front of the painting, vaguely interested at first in the intensity of color. Suddenly engulfed…

Fresh Start Past a Best By Date — Starting over is never quite the fresh, dewy, clean sweep I imagine. My square-ones are not the just-after-a-hot-shower or New Year, New Me type. They often look more like a ’99 Kia Rio with rusted out wheel wells that gets a new piece of duct tape to hold a headlight…

A Palindrome Piece — I accidentally signed up for a scam vanity publishing contest, tasked with writing a 100-word poem in palindrome. (It would read the same backward and forward, line by line.) While I discovered the mistake too late to save my submission fee (and embarrassment), I did not actually submit the piece…

New Year, Same Ennui — Years ago, my husband and I unwittingly started an annual tradition of walking the perimeter of a local lake on New Year’s Day. …

“Before you go, can I have some Mac and Cheese?” — It’s 7:21 am, and we’re in the car. I’m driving, (obviously), and both kids are in the back seat. I’ve packed 2 lunches for school and daycare, each entirely different because by the grace of the universe, they have absolutely zero shared food likes. Each kid is dressed in their…

100 and Under Fall Competition — At the start of every October, the fantasizing begins. Dark filtered images of me sitting on a giant guess-the-weight pumpkin, clad in a felt hat and wire-rimmed sunnies, a beautiful oversize taupe sweater, the front tucked into ironically perfect stonewashed jeans, and boots. Oh, the boots! My children, clean and…

Gifts from a mother who couldn’t love — We were terrified of my mother. She was violent and chaotic, mean and raunchy, wild and unhinged. At home. Out in the world, she was warm, friendly, charming and charismatic. And, for a time, pretty. She had soft, full lips and steely blue eyes. She wore gold hoop earrings the…

It was the last time I got together with my dad. 7 weeks later he was dead. — In November 2020, we were tired. And sad. And scared. And all of the multilayered emotions that go with fatigue, despair and terror. …