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Showing posts from 2017

Finding New York

When you board the bus, it is dark out. You are in New Hampshire. When you exit the bus, it is broad daylight. You are in New York. After dropping off your suitcase, you head toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it occurs to you that you have stepped into the character of Claudia Kincaid in one of your favorite childhood books,  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler . You just lack a younger brother with a card habit and pockets full of change. You take the B line north and you find that your past makes you strangely comfortable on the subway, and you silently thank your grandparents for the millionth time for that summer in London when you were fearless at thirteen and navigated your way through the underground on a daily basis. It has triumphed over your adult self full of uncertainty and fear. You are hustled up the stairs by the crush of crowds, and you find yourself curious about them. You hear snippets of conversations: "A hundred-thousand...

Little Things

On your bedside table sits a photo of two little boys: a blue-eyed dark-haired boy wearing overalls and a brown-eyed blondie wearing stripes. They stand on a screened-in porch that looks dark as night because of the trees surrounding it. Their eyes are bright and their cheeks are full. They are adorable. They are darling. They are delightful. They are childhood, joy, confidence, and light all rolled up into small bodies. They are the face of little things, the agglomeration of drips and drops of little efforts poured into a seemingly bottomless vessel. But it's the little things that count. It's the little things that nearly pull a mother down into the abyss. The endless brushing of little teeth, of washing little hands. The recurrent tying of little laces and buckling of little overalls. The ceaseless cutting of chicken or buttering of toast or peeling of carrots. The relentless singing of songs and reading of books when a mama is so tired that the words don't seem to