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February 27, 2012
Last weekened T. and I, accompanied by two neighborhood friends, went to a performance of The Sound of Music, put on by a local college. I had taken T. to one play before--Peter Pan. She was young then, about four years old, and while she still remembers the play, it's one thing to see a play at four, and quite another to see it when you are eight, and you love musicals, and you wake up each morning belting out songs from Annie, or The Sound of Music, and your new favorite book is Theater Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild.
I hadn't been to a theatrical production in ages. I might have been...
February 24, 2012
And look! The first post ever I wrote for the FE site. T. was four, and L.--how could it be? L. was only seven years old. Monday will be my last day here, so it seems fitting to put up my first post ever for my second-to-last-post.
Happy weekend!
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If you are a parent, or soon-to-be one, or will be one in the future, this has happened, or will happen to you one day:
You are standing in line at your local food store, as I was last week. Your just-turned four year-old is twisting and turning on her heels in the checkout line, singing in her sweet, slightly off-key voice...
February 23, 2012
This one was always a favorite of mine, even if I'd forgotten I'd written it, actually, until just the other day!
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A blogger friend of mine wrote the other day about a recent study out there claiming that parenthood does not, in fact, bring joy and fulfillment, that children are a source of misery and stress, and that raising them is a "lifelong challenge to your mental health." Where the data for this study came from is anyone's guess, actually, but I thought a lot about it yesterday--and about my blogger friend's...
February 22, 2012
Some of my most treasured posts have been the ones I wrote about my Greek grandparents, and my childhood summer days spent in Greece. I am compliing them together, and hoping to do something with them one day. Writing about my grandparents--especially my grandmother--brings me close to them again. I think I can smell my grandmother's kitchen, see her smile, bask in how good it felt to nestle into her embrace. My grandmother's body was a coming home place to me; one hug from her bridged the gap made from a year away, and all those days were swept up into one, as if no time at all had...
February 21, 2012
I think what I will miss the most about my job here at FE, is the space in which to write about my amazing students. I feel incredibly privileged to have the chance to work with them.
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Yesterday I was standing in the hallway at work, fumbling as usual for the keys to my office and a young woman rounded the corner, a chubby-cheeked baby in her arms. I recognized her immediately as one of the students I taught about a year ago--one of the students from this class. She'd been pregnant then--clearly with the little guy she held in her arms.
"Student S.!" I...
February 20, 2012
This post was first published in March, 2008. I love going back and reading through old "house" posts. They give me a chance to reclaim a lost part of myself, and my children's childhoods; plus, what better way to measure how far you've come on a journey, than by looking back at the starting point?
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Yesterday we had some friends come over for the afternoon, and they stayed for dinner. Because we went from ice and snow a week ago to 80-degree weather on Sunday, we headed out with them to a park we haven't been to in years. When we first moved to...
February 16, 2012
One Saturday morning a couple of years ago, a spectacular day by all counts: cool like a March day, but with warming sunshine--summer sun, not early spring sun--I sat on the back porch with my dad and watched the kids painting. My dad brought out a few blank “canvases” for them (pieces of flat boards you can buy from Home Depot—they’re really meant to put under vinyl flooring, but my dad buys them, cuts them to canvas size, and they are perfect for painting on) and the kids were creating abstract art masterpieces. I watched L. dab on stripes of green, blue and orange...
February 15, 2012
Last night, when I took Willa out for her after-dinner walk, I stopped at the street corner to take in the sky. I love craning my neck back to see what the tree branches look like against the sky, and whether or not I can spot any stars. We live in an older, wooded neighborhood, and the houses have large lots. As a result, the stars are often pretty visible. On a clear night I can even spot constellations and when it's warm, T. and I lie in the hammock on the back porch and count the stars together.
Last night, a movement caught my eye at the same time that Willa pulled at the...
February 14, 2012
On Sunday T. and I spent almost two hours making stained glass hearts for Valentine's Day, for T. to pass out to her class. We made these last year, too, and I'd forgotten just how much work was involved! They turned out beautifully, though. If you don't mind the multiple steps involved--cutting heart shapes out of wax paper, peeling and "grating" crayons, ironing the hearts so the crayons melt (make sure you cover the heart with a dishtowel first), then these hearts are unique and so fun to do. We used a hole punch to punch a hole in each one, threaded a piece of...
February 13, 2012
The first Valentine's Day Scott and I shared as a married couple, I decided to make an elaborate cookie recipe that I remember took me almost 1/2 day to complete. Looking back, I'm sure the recipe wasn't all that complicated, but I hadn't baked much if at all back then, and so it probably took me double the time, and more angst and stumbling around in the kitchen than it ought to have taken. Plus, it didn't help that our kitchen was a true galley kitchen, and you could literally stand in the midle and touch both sides of the counters on opposite ends. The cookies were some...
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