Friday, March 7, 2014



I woke up this morning an adolescent, and it feels weird. I conjured groups of staring, pointing girls, a devastating joke from a boy or two, Augustinian self-recrimination, the vestige of Catholic guilt. You're a pirate's dream, he said. A sunken chest! The sheet made a hood over my red fingertips, my nose twitched. I put on the garb of The Cheerful Mother, coaxed my son out of bed, poured coffee and thought about Sophie's birthday tomorrow, the ENT visit today, the dinner later with two dear friends, the thirty-eight years that have passed since eighth grade, how deep the gully, the last nineteen, onward.

3 comments:

  1. You've done it in beautiful fashion... here's to a celebration of yours and Sophie's life (especially the events of recent months that IMHO may be some of your best work!)
    Enjoy all the feelings of today...
    .PS. rather easy for me to relate to the adolescent imaginings as i ( rather helplessly) watch my daughter experience all of it in full force. No wonder everyone hated middle school! As I watch my son sail thru it w/out much of an issue... its so much harder for girls......at least thats how I see it as a mother of two opposite sex children rather close in age.

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  2. I am so thankful that you are writing it here that you are telling it here because your voice is so fucking true and your writing is SO DELICIOUS and honestly you and Sophie and Oliver have quite literally changed the way I view the world. Thank you.
    love,
    Rebecca

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  3. You are bursting forth with it all and it is as glorious as any flowering to be seen.

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