Essays

Although I’d believed I was protecting my children (and myself) from the haters by using a pseudonym, I’d unqualifiedly silenced the voice I’d worked so hard to awaken. How could…

I didn’t read Little Women so much as inhabit it, burrowing into the story so that its locations, colors, and conversations became a permanent part of my imaginative inner landscape.…

She gave me the gift of her insight and experience, encouraged me to do exactly what I’m doing: to treasure my time with my son during these early years, not…

It’s not a Guinness record — no ten-foot fingernails or human cannonball. No smallest waist, or longest legs, or 15,000 Barbie dolls. Guinness wouldn’t blink at me. Still, in quiet…

My daughter just turned sixteen months old and I’ve left her at home and I’m in a library typing this: I’m almost 39 and there is a thirty-inch tall drooling…

I knew I had officially become a parent when my subscription to The New Yorker disappeared and Brain, Child took its place. My twins were seventeen weeks old.

In the days leading up to talent night at my daughter’s middle school, Emily would only share that she had a short moment on stage. She had been keeping more…

The psychic is down-to-earth and expensive. My husband, Richard, is young. He lives in London, and has not yet moved to the US, where he will meet me, or to…

After the nine-hour drive home, with a few tears along the way, I anticipated a relaxing Labor Day weekend on my own — my younger son and husband were out…

When did I make the connection that my love of books was about more than the release they offered from the confines of each day’s logistical concerns? The troubles of…

My children changed so fast I could hear time whistle as it flew past me, and I was desperate to remember the small details. In the process of writing them…