Christmas is… a time capsule. A puzzle box. Buried treasure. Tradition. Comfort and joy. Orange pomander balls and stockings. Christmas trees and puddings. The season bursting with tantalizing historical questions. Questions about how we celebrate the birth of Christ and the underlying whys, and what they say about us. The ordinary points to the extraordinary. […]
Today would have been my grandmother Marie’s 100th birthday. She passed away on January 19, 2006 and was buried a few days later in the blistering cold. Born in 1920, her mother Theresa died when she was six years old of a brain aneurysm. She grew up in her Aunt Ida and Uncle Andrew’s home […]
This is the time of year when we compare summer and winter, the usual pros and cons, and brace ourselves for the downward plunge into grey skies, shorter days and snow. It usually comes down to a matter of personal preference: heat vs cold, light vs dark, ice cream vs hot tea, mowing the lawn […]
Until a few weeks ago, my writing life looked like this: I could feel the end coming. I could see it in those tiny numbers: 57, 87, 102 words cut. Weeks earlier it had been in the hundreds; if I was especially diligent, a thousand. When you’re trying to condense a novel down by several […]
I bought this oxalis shamrock about three years ago. It keeps growing despite its age and regardless of the season. It’s happy in the eastern window of my apartment, basking in the morning sun. I don’t have the greatest track record with houseplants. I have one living jade, two oxalis, one croton. I’ve killed more […]
