I knocked on the door but no one answered. A lone black container took vigil on the porch. I knocked again. Silence. The door stayed closed. I know it won’t open, but yet I am not ready to say goodbye. My car keys slip out of my hand. The jingle of the metal landing on the porch took me to a time when I had the right keys to enter. Not anymore. I drove to my childhood home in September [...]
December 2011
“My whole life is in that house.” That’s what Madonna Badger screamed on Christmas morning as her Connecticut house burned to the ground with her three children and her parents still trapped inside. On December 25, 2011, Ms. Badger lost her past and her legacy. In an instant, everything for her changed. I am humbled when I think about how the permanence our everyday life can be so transient and how ordinary life is what keeps us afloat. We all [...]
Yesterday evening, in-between my vaccuming the floors, my daughter, says affirmatively to me, “I believe in Santa.” I replied, “Of course, you believe in Santa. Why wouldn’t you?” She looks at me like a lighthouse and says, “I heard a girl say she didn’t believe in Santa.” The conversation ended as abruptly as it began. She resumed bouncing around, from one sofa to next, and then she took an occasional break to color in her book. I restarted the vaccum, [...]
As soon as my daughter wakes up, she asks, “How many hours did I sleep?” I’ve learned the hard way that it pleases her if she accumulates more than ten hours of sleep. ”I think you slept for eleven hours. Come on. Let’s get ready for school.” She heads to the bathroom and into the shower and before she puts one foot on the surface of the tile, she asks,” Will you do a hairstyle for me?” In order to [...]
December 11 marked the 51st wedding anniversary of my parents. I called my Mom to wish her Happy Anniversary not quite certain if I should dial the phone. “Happy Anniversary Mom,” I said in my most upbeat voice. She, of course, said “Thank You.” We talked about my father and I cracked a joke about him. My Mom chuckled, reminding me of the tone of my daughter’s belly laugh. She ended the conversation with choked backed tears and a hollow [...]
A year ago today my daughter lost her first tooth. Since last December, she’s lost five more teeth. And in less than a month my daughter will turn six. Inside I wonder how long her innocent look at the world will endure. Right now, at this very moment, she believes in the Tooth Fairy. She tells me that her Tooth Fairy is the sister of Tinkerbell and she flies in her room with magical powers and goodies while she sleeps. [...]
On an early evening drive to dinner, my daughter, after looking at the sunset, made this observation : “Momma, look outside the window. There is light on one side. And it is dark on the other.” Without hesitation, I looked up to my left and saw a bright blue backdrop with streaks of white. To my right, the clouds slept above the horizon and a veil of darkness descended in the sky. I fumbled for my iphone to memorialize the contrast, [...]
