Going back to my childhood home is like entering a portal to the past. In the basement is my pink-painted dresser, with baby dresses inside. In the kitchen is Danish modern ironstone crockery that my mother acquired sometime in the 1970s, perhaps a grocery store giveaway. This exact pattern is now a hot item on etsy. The [...]
My old Missouri home was a border state, harboring both Union and Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War. Parts of Missouri even seceded. There was the Kingdom of Callaway with its capitol, Kingdom City – now a not-so-regal truckstop between Columbia and St. Louis. Columbia is, I realize every time I go back, a Southern-Midwestern kind [...]
When Ian was little, I was so afraid he would choke on food that I wouldn’t let him eat unsupervised. This went on for years. He was five before I let him try that magical wonderfood known as gum – and no, not just because I’m a gum-denier. Ian’s first stick of the forbidden Fruit-Stripe was a momentous event, [...]
While waiting in the pediatrician’s office for Malcolm’s “well child” appointment yesterday, I read that Annie Lamott has a new book coming out. This did not stir the reaction you’re probably expecting. Can I be honest here? I don’t like Annie Lamott. I am apparently the only person in the entire nation who does not adore this [...]
It’s easy to forget how much time one spends in New York just trying to get from Point A to Point B. As suburbanites, we are used to hopping in a car and driving to places with plenty of free parking. Transportation has all but been erased as a hardship in our lives. In New York, we were either hoofing [...]
In a neat little trick, Chris and his best friend since second grade have arranged to do a house-swap. Today, our family of five country mice is headed to New York City to stay in David’s high-rise, mid-town, one bedroom-with-fold-out-couch apartment. We will park our car in the garage under his building, zoom up the [...]
The following conversation took place when Malcolm was six years old: M: Today at school some new kid told me my name was weird. Us: Oh honey, that must have hurt your feelings. What is this new child’s name? M: (sniffling) Torbin. In the courtroom of our kitchen we arrived at a judgment: Pot calling [...]
For years, all the stuff that had no home went to live in the guest room. In the closets, under the bed, in the dresser drawers were things like my wedding dress, out-of-season clothing, scores of “Congratulations on your new baby!” cards, rattles, an ironing basket ignored for so long that the wrinkled shirts it contains were long [...]
Malcolm has a friend who has braces, smiling his big silver grin with abandon. I said “So Mike, who is your orthodontist?” Mike gave me the name of the guy who has a practice in a charming stone house… located smack dab in the center of the middle school parking lot. I admire this orthodontist more than I can [...]
When my brother Tom was in the Foreign Service, he ran across a file on someone whose visa application had been denied. A colleague had written LLPOF on the file. Tom: “Hey, what does LLPOF stand for?” Colleague (matter-of-factly) : “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” We have always gotten a kick out of this [...]
