Day 15 of quarantine, Toilet paper supply is stable, but tensions are high. I spent Friday night cooking vinegar braised chicken and roasted beats when I began to feel that throb of restlessness. It’s coming, I thought. I drowned it in the last bottle of wine I had stashed away, unnerved by the fact that […]
Q: Do you admire Elegance? A: Yes, because it makes you feel better. It’s a form. I’m very attached to certain forms, like compulsive rituals. I like to cook; I like to sew. They’re peaceful things, and they’re an expression of caring. The interview question above is answered by Joan Didion. I passed it while […]
An English professor once told my short stories class that if you want to be a writer, it’s imperative you live in New York at least once in your life. I took his advice to heart and moved to New York not after graduation, but during it. Eight years later, I understand his advice in […]
In 1816, twenty-year-old Mary Shelley and her husband traveled to Switzerland for a summer vacation to the home of their friend’s house, Lord Byron. For three weeks, however, the weather was so bad, so fraught with storms and high winds, no one was able to leave the house. With a few other guests staying with […]
Jay (my husband) and I got in a fight the other night. One of those fights where I think, This is it. He’s going to leave me one day. With all that frustration and anger in his voice, how could he not? It was one of those fights that comes out of nowhere. The kind […]
Motherhood. The word sails through my mind at random yet with increasing persistence. Maybe because I’m getting closer to that age. Maybe because it’s around me more. Maybe because this is how it happens. A word enters the brain, slowly, over time, becoming a thought, that thought then nestling into the body, unconsciously or consciously […]
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual. -Angela Carter I love cities. Born in the small, but accurately proportioned city of Philadelphia, my fondest memory is a recurring one – a simple walk to the park at dusk. As the light slipped across the buildings, my […]
The office is tiny. In between a Baskin-Robins and a dry cleaner. I sit at a desk littered with loose papers and brochures in front of a large monitor with an array of open tabs. A red WAWA coffee cup sits next to the keyboard. Behind me is Tammie, at sixty-two she’s just returned to […]