It was summer and, although my mother and I don’t remember exactly how old I was, I was old enough to read and old enough to know better. My mother held the box of effervescent denture tablets in one hand and, in the days before 911, dialed Poison Control on my grandmother’s rotary phone. I stood there stupidly in my grandmother’s kitchen, wondering how...
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Most Saturday mornings start the same: I ask my husband who will make us pancakes for breakfast. Since the cats are not quite teenagers yet (and do not have opposable thumbs, nor are they tall enough to reach the stove), our options are limited. Sadly, I have yet to perfect making pancakes at high altitude. I never remember if it’s more flour, more milk or...
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I bought Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, while traveling for Christmas a few years ago. We were staying at a rental house that was incredibly clean and sparsely decorated—I was ready to occupy that space permanently. Reading Kondo’s book made me eager to return home and tidy the hell out of everything; it seemed possible I could...
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The holiday gifts are purchased and wrapped. Now is the time I buy one thing for myself to help me in the year ahead. I can spend hours in a single day looking and still not find it. I’m in search of something so perfect, so uniquely me that I will not know exactly what it looks like until I see it. In between holiday concerts year-end work and...
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I had dinner recently with a group of writing colleagues while we were at a conference. One writer shared part of his talk for his panel presentation on the concept of home. My colleagues then shared the journeys they had taken and the many places they had lived through the years. We talked about where we were from, where we live now and if we considered...
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