I love pens. I love paper. I love handwriting. The combination of different sizes and shapes of letters on paper is ordinary happiness for me. In the last ten years, though, I haven’t received one letter. Not one. It is certainly the era of Hallmark moments. We pick up cards at the local grocery store, with the perfect message, and sign our name to it. With the evolution of technology, the advent of e-mail and text messages, it is easy to [...]
April 2010
At 5:45 a.m. at least three times a week, I wake up, inch out of our bed without disturbing my husband, and tiptoe into my closet. Half asleep, I look for my shorts, a shirt, and my socks. I head to the garage and find my running shoes, the ones with a tag affixed to the shoelace that reminds me to “Never Give Up.” The headphones in my ear and I am ready to dash. I start running and the [...]
The morning is crisp, the sun is beating down the pavement, and my daughter and I climb into the car for our morning commute to her school. We drive to an intersection, one that is filled with a long row of cars. Inside our car, the cd player plays my daughter’s favorite song and she is singing words that she can’t quite pronounce. She stops for a second and tells me to turn off the music. I welcome that request [...]
It is more than just a black truck with chalk on it. The sun shines, each finger of light enveloping my barefoot daughter. She doesn’t care. Her mind is on a black truck and she is eager to add her own flair to the chaos. I am standing, a few feet behind her, listening to music blaring from the stereo speakers, breathing fresh air, my eye focused on each of her chalk strokes. I don’t expect my eyes to be [...]
I am in the grocery store, loading items into my cart, my daughter hanging off the metal ends. She wants something. I ignore her for a few minutes, but she is unrelenting, saying “Momma, please, I really want the pop tarts, please.” She doesn’t like pop tarts and I am not going to give in. I realize what this means. Crying. Screaming. Loudly. In the middle of the grocery store. As predicted, all these things happen when I say “No, [...]
Last week my dear Mom called a fortune teller. She wanted to ask her several things, but settled on one question. The fortune teller gave her some random response, an answer I could have given her. My mom couldn’t ask any follow-up questions because there was a one question limit. I laugh at my Mom, scoffing her about the call, but she is old school, believing in star alignments, signs, and superstition. Although most of us probably don’t consult [...]
I am at the airport terminal, watching all of the passengers, a woman with a young child who is exploring what is on the ground, the college student going home for the first time, and the elderly couple, who move together in unison, slow and deliberate, while the wheelchair tries to summon them along, maybe faster than they really want to go. Everyone has somewhere to go – a final destination. The line begins to form at the gate, the [...]
In the recent weeks, I’ve been really caught up about complaining about Phoenix. It is turning hot here, the high yesterday almost 97 degrees and I am reminded about how it gets too hot too fast in this city. It isn’t even summer yet and the air conditioning is turned on in our house. There are other things that aren’t appealing about the desert, like javelinas (wild pigs) walking down our street at 10:00 p.m. and the sidewinder snake in [...]
My ten year law school reunion is happening at the end of this month. I think about what has happened since I graduated law school. I try to downsize ten years, but I can’t. Reunions foster a curiosity about how others fared, but really it becomes about what has happened to you over the last ten years. When I decided to go to law school, I was so confident that I would be in the legal world forever. The idea [...]
It is de-cluttering week at my house. During the spring and winter of every year I clear out each room of our house and decide what needs to be thrown, donated, and kept. I’ve always called myself minimalist, not needing stuff to make me happy, but after this week’s de-cluttering, I think it is necessary for me to question if I truly am what I say I am. After clearing out my closet and my daughter’s closet, I filled eight [...]
