You may know me as the martial artist who wrote Dojo Wisdom or as the mother who wrote For Jessica. Either way, thank you for stopping by my website. Here you can find out the most current information about what I’m up to, learn a bit about writing and publishing, and listen to me talk about my daughter.
“We are going to Italy,” Jessica announces to her father on the phone. I have already discussed it with him, but apparently he makes suitable sounds of enthusiasm and excitement, because a smile spread across her face. “It is a good thing I already have a passport,” she adds, sounding …
I am sitting in Jessica’s IEP meeting thinking there is not enough strong drink available. There is none at all, in fact, though my position has always been that serving alcohol would make these sessions easier to get through. I don’t mean to imply that there is anything difficult about …
We are getting on the plane to go home, our long weekend in DC over. Security is less obnoxious here than in Kansas City, and I suppose that’s because no one really expects the terrorists to head for the heartland. Jessica is being unusually attentive to me this morning. She …
“It’s going to rain today,” Jessica says. “Yes, it sure looks like it,” I agree. “I just wanted to make sure you know.” “Um, okay,” I say. I am fully capable of reading a weather forecast or looking up at the iron-gray sky and reaching the appropriate conclusion, but whatever. …
“We should go to the Eastern Market today,” Jessica says as we stand on the sidewalk outside our hotel. Other people would have decided what they were going to do by now, but I have rather intensively planned three days of activities and now my brain is done. It …
Jessica and I are eating at the Mad Greek, our favorite place to go when she comes home from her father’s house. The evening sun is low in the sky and the mellow light glows through the window, glancing off her round cheeks, illuminating her intense focus as she tries …
There was a time in my life when I was allowed to have some personal dignity. That time ended the day I went into labor and people started wandering into the delivery room and feeling me up with impunity. So Jessica and I are waiting for one of those damned …
“So,” Jessica’s dad says as I pick up her meds and medical equipment from him. “How was the conference?” I’ve been out of town for a business meeting and he is being his usual polite self. Even at the height of our discord, when I had the butcher knife in …
On our first day in D.C., I ask Jessica what she’d like to do and she immediately says she would like to see the White House, so we walk over to the concierge at our hotel and he gets out a colorful map and shows in very clear steps how …
I am standing on a subway platform in Washington, D.C., and trying to figure out how, exactly, to get to the line I want to get to, and Jessica is vibrating with anxiety next to me. “Do you know what you’re doing?” “Does it look like I know what I’m …
People often ask me parenting questions, saying, “What would you do?” I know why they ask; it’s because I am extremely positive that I know the answer to everything except when I don’t. And yet the question always strikes me as somewhat misguided. I may be absolutely convinced that a …
“A practice trip,” I say to Jessica. “You think we need a practice trip before we decide about going to Italy.” Jessica loves to travel, and she spots a possibility for getting two trips instead of one. I don’t like to say she’s devious and manipulative, because I don’t think …