She’s four. Sewing for the first time. It’s August 19, 1999, which I know because I happened to write about this day in my Mother’s Journal. She has insisted on sewing “with a real needle.” Together we decide on a felt pillow for her baby doll, Cookie. She chooses purple cloth, purple thread, her favorite. That night [...]

I can’t help but think of 2017 as my year of rejection. That sounds pathetic, and I hesitate to write about it because I’m not snuffling around for pity. The other day, when I began writing my yearly goals in my new Passion Planner, I looked back at last year’s goals. My top goal: “submit stuff!” [...]

My daughter sits beside me, writing madly in her journal, the red journal she bought yesterday at the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. I made her go inside with me after breakfast, after I flew in from California on a red eye because it’s inexcusable to live in Manhattan without having been in [...]

I did not recognize them. Large, rounded plants with wands and wands of tiny lavender blossoms, hundreds of them. Absolutely alive with bees. I have never seen so many bees in one place, other than around a beehive, like the hive in my own yard. The bees were crazed for these plants. What were they? [...]

I had a beloved coffee cup. Tall and handle-free, white with tiny red flowers and a silicone sleeve. A small chip at the lip. If you know me in real life, you have surely seen it in my grip at one point or another, as I used it constantly and not just for coffee. If [...]

I’m in a chrysalis here. For the past six weeks I took a writing class online. Which somewhat explains my lack of writing in this space. It was a class with Lidia Yuknavitch called metamorphoses and it pretty much consumed me. Made me feel like a fish out of water, with a teacher who loves [...]