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Glorious Failures
The following is reprinted with permission from When I Was There, an anthology of life at U.C. Berkeley from the ’60s till now. The super conservative former college…the café I opened at age twenty in San Antonio (“Can I get a taco with that latté?”)…the pot fragrance company…all of these glorious failures prepared me. When…
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Being Happy
In the last month I’ve felt peace I couldn’t imagine or expect. Story Jane, our daughter, was born 16 days late. More beautiful and simply okay than I dared to hope. She’s okay…she’s here…and I’ve felt more relaxed than I can ever remember feeling. I really feel like a mom! Or more specifically: like a…
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My First Novel (gag)
My Little Pony My First Novel I feel shy about it. “My novel,” I’d say as an awkward pubescent might say “my private parts.” I labored over my love-story-gone-wrong for years. I grew it paragraphy by paragraph. I wrote and re-wrote. I cried and got stuck and fought my way onward. I kept writing, and…
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Overdue
I’ve been up, I’ve been down. I’ve been optimistic, I’ve been sure, and I’ve been utterly defeated. She didn’t–she hasn’t–come. My daughter’s still stewing / baking / dreaming / swimming in utero, while my mind whirs away trying to find meaning, a plan, an approach, a place of quiet where the whappa whappa sounds will…
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Due Date
Yes, I’m waiting to go into labor. On the other side of it, I can imagine holding her. That new baby smell. I can imagine having a family of four, and it being a sweet sweet thing. I can also imagine the first few weeks and months being hard. The agony of sleep deprivation, the…
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Money Changes Everything: the Bay Bridge Carpool Toll
I yearn for the simpler days when we weren’t all talking about, and exchanging, money in the mutually beneficent system known as Casual Carpool.
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Learnin’
I’m starting to see how having a baby could be not only possible, but possibly beautiful.