Write On

  As I lay here beside his twelve-year-old body, I note, as I have so many other nights, the deep, even sounds of his breath. He’s laying on his back, arms sprawled out to the side like Christ on the cross. The backside of his hand is actually resting on my cheek and nose. His hand is soft and warm and I close my eyes so I can travel through time…   With my eyes closed, his hand could be twelve or six, or even two years old. And I enjoy the fantasy of traveling back in time and having had this experience of laying beside a healthy deeply sleeping Alex. I imagine tiny baby Alex laying beside me in bed with his hand on my face. And then the tears come. Because there was never such a night. And for a moment I lose contact with here and now and his sweet hand on my face, and my whole body tenses as the memory replaces the fantasy. His high pitched relentless wail, the way he would arch his whole body  I wonder how many parents have never even noticed their 12-year old’s b...

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Chapter 1 Manhattan, New York “I used to be Amish.”  The extra-hot, double shot, oat milk latte burbled in Darcy King’s stomach.  She clutched the cup in an over-caffeinated death grip, fearing any moment it would crumple and cascade coffee down her white cashmere sweater.  “At least my family was…back in the day.” Everyone—every editor and staff writer and editorial assistant and freelance photographer like herself and, oh yes, the terrifying Editor in Chief of Hudson Magazine, Margo Ricconi-Gladstone herself, stared.  Darcy shifted on the three-inch wide windowsill at the back of the conference room where she perched with the other freelancers lucky enough to gain access to editorial meetings and desperate to maintain that status.  She swallowed hard, tasting coffee and fear.  She’d been advised repeatedly to fly under the radar. Drawing attention to herself and in so doing, the ire of every senior staff member was not necessarily wise.  Some staff...

  Five months into the pandemic I ordered a desk and set up my office in my bedroom, 16” from my bed. For the first five months I had been hunched over the kitchen island on a bar stool with my feet in the spice basket, and four feet away Emma worked from the couch - it was not ideal.   Emma came home a day after I started working remotely and, because she was still teaching in Ireland, often taught from her bed in the guest room at 4 am (10 am in Dublin).    During the days, we dodged phone calls and meetings (Emma like to work with music on, I do not), often taking calls in the bathroom or running upstairs if the call didn’t require access to a laptop.   I had grand visions of working from the deck, lovely calming view at the ready, but the reality was that the VPN was spotty out there and the noise factors of wind, trucks backing up, and neighbors also working outside meant the conditions were never perfect. Occasionally I could rock a few hours working on a ...

I tried to push aside my emotions—to look at the photo objectively and see what was really there not what I was afraid was there.  I wouldn’t let my mind play tricks on me.  I took a deep breath and squinted at the photo in Chris’s hand.  To the right of the trunk, Chris and Andi, dressed bunched in their arms, were doubled over, laughing.  To the left, Becca posed behind the pink meringue, lips pursed like a fashion model.  I leaned toward her, grinning, the slinky, green dress held up to my shoulders and my left leg kicking wonkily out to one side.  All that was perfectly normal. Behind the trunk…someone… peeked over the open lid.  The pattern fabric covering the inside of the top almost looked like a dress she wore.   I blinked.  “Is it just a smudge?  Or a fingerprint?” Andi shook her head.  “I see a face.  Eyes and a nose.  Hair even.  I think she’s…smiling.” Chris studied the picture then looked over it and...

 April 29, 2020  I’m claiming Julia on HBO Maxx for myself: it was apparently made just for me.   Oh sure, you can watch it if you like, but ask yourself: did you work for WGBH as a freshly scrubbed college grad in the early 80s? Did Avis DeVoto share space in your office (a trailer far away from the main studio even though the Auction raised 11% of the station’s operating budget)? Did you also go to women’s college? And shared a love of cooking from an early age?    Okay, fine. You will love the show as I do even if you haven’t ticked any of those boxes. Why? Because it is magical.   It is important.   It’s entertaining and lovely and thought provoking. It initially sets you wondering: how much of this is true? But after a while, you don’t care – you want to be under it’s/her spell. At first glance you might think, oh boy, another take on Julia Child - just what I need .   But it’s more than that – it’s the story about the early struggles of p...

  I’ve been trying to write about grief and about losing my mother.       The words we choose are so strange.  Losing.  I didn’t LOSE her the way you lose a cardigan when you are too drunk to remember to take it off the back of your chair when you leave the bar.  I was there.  I saw her go.  I know that she is gone.  GONE.  Another one.  Is she GONE?  I don’t know. She could be sitting right next to me, but her physical self is no longer here. I can’t hold her hand.  I can hope for one more quick smile.        When you comfort me… don't say RELIEF… as in IT MUCH BE SUCH A RELIEF.  don't say BETTER PLACE. don't say I MEAN AFTER ALL YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH... It robs me of my loss and of my grief. You are trying to make yourself feel better maybe by trying to imagine that her death doesn't hurt as much as you think it might. Your desire to ...

 In 2010, Gail Caldwell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, wrote Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship about her relationship with the writer Caroline Knapp. The two met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they both lived, and bonded over dogs, a love of books, and the outdoors, as well as their respective sports: swimming (Caldwell) and rowing (Knapp.) The friends came from very different backgrounds but had deeply connected interests. Knapp grew up in Cambridge, the daughter of a famous psychiatrist, while Caldwell was born in the Texas Panhandle. Despite beginnings set widely apart, many common threads bound them together. Quitting drinking was a big part of their shared history, though each gave up alcohol separately, before they knew one another. Knapp's account of her addiction turned into the memoir Drinking: A Love Story , a 1996 New York Times bestseller. In addition to sobriety, the friends each started out their careers as columnists in Boston. Both...

In the ‘90s, I threw a party where someone floated this question, “What do you know for sure?” Back then, I couldn't articulate anything with unwavering certainty. I don’t even remember my answer. It surely lacked conviction. But the question has followed me ever since and I often ask myself, “is this something I know for sure?” I have always looked at the world through a design lens. Design is a creative problem solving process. But there was still something underneath, something fundamental that I wasn’t capturing -- until COVID turned everything upside down. That’s when my understanding of Design came into crystal clear focus. Place. Design creates place – the physical parameters of it and our emotional tether to it. We live in a physical world and the tools, graphics, and systems that we use are design responses that reinforce our place . COVID changed how we move through the world and shifted our engagement from physical to virtual. Our ability to navigate a Zoom world stil...

As I clomped up Becca’s front stairs, toting my backpack and sleeping bag, I screwed up my face and hoped hard that the room where I saw the black shadow wasn’t hers.  When I dumped my stuff on her floor and looked out the window, even in the dark, I knew it was. I focused all my energy on arranging my features in a normal human expression and scanned the room.  No weirdness.  Just lots of cool touches that seemed unique and very Becca.  For instance, hanging over the bed was a big square piece of fabric with a blue and teal design that reminded me of a peacock tail made of flowers. “Cool tapestry,” Chris said, dropping her things in front of a metal desk that looked like one a teacher might have in the front of a classroom. “It’s a mandala.  Sanskrit for circle.  Mama says they bring peace and balance.  Sounds kooky, but either way it’s good for covering holes.  Moving so much, I never know what my next bedroom will look like, but luckily this on...

  Late in the afternoon of May 30, 2009, I stood poised in front of my childhood home, about to close the door to my family’s home of fifty years for the last time. I propped open the screen door with my right heel and reached into the front hall with my left hand to pull the heavy door closed. I glanced into the living room and took in the bare floors and empty space. That house was many things over the years, but empty was not one of them. To see it stripped down and naked felt inappropriate; I knew it was time to leave. There was nothing left for me there.  My elderly mother had passed weeks earlier, and I had a new husband standing by in Warsaw, Poland. The dog sat in the backseat of the  car, waiting for me to reverse out of the driveway to begin our new life. I sat in the driver's seat. To the left, stood the hedge I had delighted in pruning, first with a pair of clippers, and later, when I was older and braver, with electric trimmers. To the right was my mother’s r...

A horn sounded, and with his hands securing his goggles and cap, Andrew Hewitt leapt off the dock and into the Hudson River, the smack of the brackish water his baptism for the day ahead. The Manhattan Island Marathon Swim had begun, and Hewitt's race number, inked onto his left bicep, gleamed in the early morning light.  Dozens of swimmers were attempting a circumnavigation of Manhattan, and the water grew choppy as they kicked and stroked their way out of the cove. Tracing the island counterclockwise, Hewitt and the others would head down the Hudson, around the Battery, and up the East River. From there they would cross the Harlem River and then swim back down the Hudson. At twenty-eight and a half miles, the swim was longer than either the English or Catalina Channel swims. It was Hewitt's first triple crown event.  A 41-year-old former Navy Seal, Hewitt hailed from San Diego. Like the other racers, he had two support boats accompanying him, a small fishing boat and a kayak...

  Chapter Five Andi tapped my shoulder.  “Are you all right?”  I swallowed hard and nodded.  “Ellen, do you have more candy?”  The plastic-wrapped nugget was hot and kind of damp.  I unwrapped it and laid the sweet on my tongue, focusing on the fake watermelon flavor that was, at that moment, the only thing I knew for certain to be real.   Becca sort of skipped across the gravel to Daniel and threw her arms around his shoulders.  “That was amazing!  You are such a talented musician.” Daniel snort chuckled and dumped the spit out of his trumpet.  A huge glob plopped next to his sneaker.  “Much obliged, much obliged.  An auspicious beginning to the spooky season if I do say so myself.”  His face flushed red enough that I could see it through the dark. “He’s gonna love her forever.”  Andi chuckled.  “And I’m totally there for it.” “Let’s go.”  Chris whirled and headed back down the path.   “Thank...

This is the year that my mom dies. I mean, most likely. I’m not hurrying it along but I am aware that it is, realistically, a thing that will occur.  It is early January of 2022.  She entered hospice care in November of 2021 meaning the medical community thinks that she has less than six months to live. That’s why they let you into hospice.  For me hospice means that she has a few extra pairs of eyes on her with the mandate of keeping her comfortable.  And it means that I can start thinking about her death in a very real and concrete way.    I want to trust the hospice nurses when they tell me that she isn’t in pain and even though I’ve asked them to come on board for their professional opinion, I find I have a hard time believing them.  I think it is because I personally am in pain a lot of the time right now.  I’m 51. My hips hurt and my back hurts and sometimes my knees hurt and when I’m in pain, I am not always wi...

My Mom was 80 when the way I saw her radically changed. Mom stayed home to raise my brother and me on the Seattle homefront while my Dad traveled the globe during his storied career at Boeing. Mom’s comfort zone took up a very small radius. I knew Mom to be timid and hesitant. She hasn’t driven in years but when she did it was with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. I could count her regular destinations on one hand. Any detours away from the familiar would throw her into a panic behind the wheel. As a Chinese woman in 1960s, Mom was defined by her relationships to others as a wife, mother, sister, and daughter. Caring for others was her primary purpose. Dad’s career came first. His booming temper of authority regularly made the walls shake. During his frequent business trips, home was quieter. It felt safer to exhale for all of us. It was during Dad’s absences that Mom would regularly run the vacuum cleaner over the wall-to-wall shag while wailing at the top of h...

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“Becca!  Look at this.”  Ellen plopped her bag in front of a pointy stone that looked like a smaller and fancier Washington Monument.  “I found the Foggs.” The Fogg memorial stood in the middle of a big grassy rectangle marked off by low cement stones sort of like the ones my mom always bumps into in parking lots.  Except these were granite and rounded.  In the center towered a marble obelisk with the single name “Fogg” embossed in capital letters.  Lined up in rows and clusters all around were oodles of dead Foggs.  I stepped over one of the barriers, super conscious of the fact I was standing on top of people and skirted between graves to an area that looked older.  Right under a huge pine tree, stones dating back to the 1700’s had creepy winged skulls carved on the tops and eerie, barely-legible epitaphs.  Thick roots bulged up around them like splayed fingers.  I stumbled over uneven ground and, catching my balance, read aloud from Z...