In a few weeks, I will turn another year older. It isn’t a milestone birthday, which means it is generally one of those birthdays that blends in with all the rest and is both awesome and inconsequential at the same time. It is one of the “something” birthdays. A…
I cried this morning. I cried for no reason and for all the reasons. Sometimes that happens. I had been reading through this essay that I will read on Jennifer Scharf’s podcast later today. I wanted to practice reading through it. But also, I wanted to remember. I started reading and with each…
Last fall while I was out for a walk, I passed a young mom on the street. When I first saw her from a half a block away, I thought about how lovely it must be to be out for a mid-afternoon walk on a warm and sunny afternoon. As…
The phone rang in our motel room around 9 a.m., startling us all. In 1987, motel room phones only rang if it was a wake-up call or a noise complaint. Unfortunately, it was neither. My mom answered the phone, sitting sideways on the bed next to the nightstand. She talked…
Soak it up, the radio DJ told me yesterday afternoon while I drove home after dropping Teddy off at school. The weather was warm and lovely and delicious, a rare treat for November in Chicago. Soak it up, she said. We’ll miss this weather in a few months. After I pulled…
My grandparents raised their family in a tiny, brick bungalow on the west side of Milwaukee. The size of the house was inversely proportionate to the size of their family, something that by today’s standards seems to not only defy the laws of comfort, but of logic as well. Yet,…