Yesterday was the annual Garden Walk in our fair cities, where gardening is a religion.  The Garden Walk is an event where you pay lots of money to walk through other people's gardens that are much nicer than yours will ever be.  Like many religious ceremonies which purp… Read full post »

This is a post about humiliation (mine), and I’m sharing it on behalf of women who are tired of the mythology of Spanx.  (By Spanx, I include the plethora of other slimming garments, included, but certainly not limited to: “no waistband” pantyhose, anything with the word &ldquo… Read full post »

Not to worry, my friends.  “From the Heart 2.0” is not lowering its standards or discretion (sentence to follow completely contradicts this statement).  I had my annual trip to the gynecologist this week, and I got to see my favorite nurse practitioner.  Ever… Read full post »

Like the wedding of Charles and Diana, William and Catherine’s wedding has been referred to, over and over again, as a “fairy tale.”  Most of us are guilty of using commonly repeated words or phrases, such as fairy tales, without really thinking about what they mean.&… Read full post »

Unraveling

“I’m unraveling,” she said. 
“Where’s the thread?” he asked.  “I’ll pull it.”

Pull a thread and this dense fear
spins out and away into gales
like bits of flying paper
like cyclones
like breathlessness. 

Then my life floats do… Read full post »

A Prayer

In the breath
of the forest
by the roots
of a linden
I say your name
to the wind
and my longing
gets wings.

LCS 2011
Read full post »

 Three of my gorgeous friends stood outside the restaurant
where I sat eating dinner with the poet
and made faces at me
through the window.
They were wearing red and turquoise
and pale green silk,
and with their ripe smiles
they looked like goddesses behaving goofily.
This is not what… Read full post »

Full confessions or perhaps full disclosure:  I am married with three children, ages 14, 12 and 5.  I experienced post-partum depression with all three kids (the first two undiagnosed which did almost irreparable damage to my marriage, and anticipate… Read full post »

Labyrinth

“How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out
Yes! No!”

–Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!” 

1.

The coils of this labyrinth remind me of the small intestine.  A bad sign.  We are here for a spirit… Read full post »

January is a confusing month.  First you get the sort of upswing of energy that comes from, making it through Christmas, and it's an emotional, albeit somewhat arbitrary fresh start.  It ushers in the New Year's Resolutions challenge, but if you read my post about resolutions, you know… Read full post »

Unanswered Questions from Dinner with a Poet

“What are you thinking about now?” he asked,
across the table,
over the empty plates,
into the silence of an unfinished conversation.

“Is it normal to be terrified?” I want to say.
And when will writing not feel
like assembling… Read full post »

Events that seem to be surrounded by expectation confuse me, and trigger that fear that I am a few steps off from everyone else.  Not a truthful fear, but a common fear nonetheless, and one the world does little to soothe for any of us.  New Year’s Eve is one of… Read full post »

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to "write what you know."  It makes sense on one level, because the most compelling writing is typically the most authentic.  This advice has never worked that well for me though, because my first reaction is to immediately d… Read full post »

In 2002, Maya Angelou was the speaker at the University of Illinois’ commencement.  It was a cloudy day, and all the dusty old Important University Administrators droned on and on with their dusty old words.  And then Maya Angelou was introduced.  She stepped to th… Read full post »

There was a lady in our old neighborhood who used to walk up and down the sidewalks backwards.  Sometimes she carried what appeared to be two gallon jugs of drinking water, one in each hand.  She was very thin, made all her own clothes, and had a very complex relationship with… Read full post »

"I'll always think of you when I see dirt," he told her. He said this because every time they walked in the woods, she smeared dirt between her hands. Dry summer dirt, cold, crunchy winter dirt, and all the promising, practically edible dirts of the spring and fall. Being with him… Read full post »

In late February, it was Winter Break for many east coast schools.  On Monday, one of my friends in Pennsylvania posted on Facebook that her "togetherness quotient" had expired; on Tuesday, my sister, who was at home in New Jersey with her three small children, texted me to ask who was… Read full post »

Sometimes complete strangers say things that can change your whole life.  That is not what this post is about, though.  This post is about something that happened to me several years ago on a flight from Newark to Chicago, where I was sitting next to an older Asian man who, out… Read full post »

One of the major disadvantages of getting a Ph.D. in Literature is that any pure love of reading that may have led you to make the ridiculous choice to enter a Ph.D. program in the first place has been leached out of you by the time you have crawled through the desert… Read full post »