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Showing posts from May, 2011

Omni-Mom

Wake up. Write. Read. Pray. Dress. Pack lunches. Eat breakfast in the car. Gym. Shake yo' booty. Shower. Pick up Gingerbread Boys. Pick up Gingerbread Man. Immunizations. One, two, three. Ow. Get sticker that says "I was brave!" Drop off Gingerbread Man. Drop off Gingerbread Boys. Home for lunch at 2:00. Breathe. Still to come: homework time, practice time, supper time, and evening band concert. IT'S OMNI-MOM, our favorite heroine!

Kid Fears

If you were to look down, out of the sky, hovering over a small house in a city far from here, you would see a scabby-kneed girl, a serious girl, a girl too old for her biological years. You might be able to feel the fear that rose up around her like a bubble, a tangible fear, a fear that followed her wherever she went. On trips to the beach with its soft, sandy white shores, she would sit in the shallows where the sand under her was crested from the action of the waves. There she was safe from scary things in the deep, from seaweed that stretched out toward her ankles, from fish that might nibble on her toes, from monsters and goons. On picnics, she sat on a blanket, or on the cement if there was cement nearby, for the grass might harbor small things that would crawl or bite. It might harbor glass shards, or rusty nails, or pop cans. At school, she listened. She wrote. She read. But she wouldn't raise her hand, for fear that someone would laugh, or worse, that someone would

La Dolce Vita e Molto Caro

Twenty years ago, you packed your bags. It was time to go home. Mostly you packed shirts and pants and socks, squeezing them into the corners and crevices of your suitcases. You rolled them up, not caring about the state they would arrive in.  You were certain you would never want to wear any of them again, having worn them over and over and over during your months there. They had been scrubbed within an inch of their lives and hung out to dry by your faithful Italian host mama, bleached in the strong Italian sun and dried to a crisp. You packed the camera, the film, the journal. The notebooks, the sketches.  You packed the souvenirs and gifts for your family, gathered during visits to Venice, to Florence, to Rome, to San Gimignano, to Assisi. Books, panforte, a silver Etruscan ring, a compass, Murano glass. You didn't bring back much for yourself--a green suede jacket, a book of photos, a ring, some Florentine paper. Most of what you brought back couldn't be packed. Your