Red Diaper Dharma

Bill Sonnenschein March 15, 1949 – December 29, 2008 All of us at Literary Mama are deeply saddened to learn of the death of columnist Ericka Lutz’s husband Bill Sonnenschein.…

A painting I did the first year Bill and I were together shows a field of green. In the center there’s a floating bed, and in the middle of the…

One of my favorite Roz Chast cartoons shows a woman in her forties or fifties wearing a flowing baggy dress with a wild hairstyle and clunky jewelry. The words read:…

My daughter turns sixteen this month. Not such a sweet sixteen, a birthday plagued by the presidential election. I ask her what she thinks of the conflagration: red state vs.…

I know people who seem to morph: one year she’s a radical lesbian scorning the system, and five years later she’s an upper-middle class doctor’s wife driving carpool; one year…

It’s last month. We’re on a road trip, Annie and I. Nine days through California, Nevada, and Arizona. Motels and hotels, national parks and ghost towns, road food. It’s June,…

I ran feral for five or six years in my early twenties. These are years my family knows little about. Oh, I sometimes share a few impressive incidents here and…

Like our dog Mollie, a brown-eyed, sausage-bodied Labrador-mix, my family is completely obsessed with food. Some families drink, and that’s a part of their culture. Some do sports. Some focus…

Bill and I have been going on about life, and it’s been good. The same house for the last nine years, the same university jobs, slow increases in salary and…

How do you parent a teenager, how do you raise an independent child without either suppressing her spirit or making her feel uncared for? Maybe I struggle with this because…

Unlike the disciplined writers I know and admire who get bits done every day, I write in blurts, in bursts, in short binges fueled by roasted unsalted almonds, dark chocolate,…