I’m on the phone with a friend of mine who lives in New York, and she mentions that she ran into a novelist she knows who lives down the street from her—“It’s New York, after all”—and I say, “Yeah, you can’t swing a cat without hitting a writer.” Jessica is listening to me and suddenly her…
Month: November 2011
A Thanksgiving Story
(An update to my annual Thanksgiving post) I love Thanksgiving, which I think is the most underrated holiday in the year. It got eaten by Christmas about twenty years ago, so people are already stressed about what’s going to go under the tree when they haven’t even had their annual allotment of pumpkin pie yet. I…
On lies of omission
I posted about last week’s essay on Facebook, and a friend who is dealing with her own such situation wrote, “I don’t know how you keep doing it, keep feeling lucky and keep going. Some days, Jennifer, every step is such agony, and the lack of balance and fairness stuns me into stillness.” I spend…
On the way we are made
“I hope the house is not on fire,” Jessica remarks, coming into the bedroom where I am folding laundry. “What?!?!!” I shriek. “There,” she says, pointing. “That looks like a flame.” It does, but it is simply a scrap of red metallic paper that has fetched up against the wall, probably leftover from a piece…