The Wild Things

No one is guaranteed a second summer on this earth. I could try to bury this thought in the back of my mind, but I like to keep it right…

I catch grace when I stop contemplating the stupid thing I said to a friend last week or even what I’m going to write in this very column later. I…

To me, the purest form of creative expression would look just like that: Not performed for approval, but done to articulate oneself in a new, larger way. I would like…

The great lie, here, is that in ”having it all,” we have sacrificed nothing. In reality, we’ve sacrificed the act of choice itself. Instead of weighing our options and determining…

Then one night I heard her remark, quite casually in the bath, ”I’m a bad kid.” I felt like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over my head.…

”Well, clearly I’m not needed here, ” I said to Marc, shoving on my shoes. I felt like my own child’s temporary babysitter, just waiting for the real parent to…

I might have a little touch of the fever. It’s not just the puppies. Inside Starbucks, there’s a three-month-old baby gurgling inside her car seat while her mother waits in…

Love should come, I thought, like breathing, like a beating heart: effortlessly. But it did not come effortlessly, and I felt so guilty. Guilty and terrified.

Once I actually had children, other people’s judgments just got louder, until they were buzzing constantly in my ears. There was the waiter who found my public breastfeeding so offensive…

When I was pregnant the second time, I eventually got too big to wear my first child in her carrier. I couldn’t carry two children at once; my heart ached…

My three-year-old watched me silently with round eyes, ripe for impression. When she asked me what I was doing, I danced around the word “kill.” I told her I was…