Writing
New York Times: After the Rollercoaster
Voices on Addiction: Want to Believe
I took a breath, tugged one last time at my bathing suit, and jumped. The water was icy, an electrical shock prodding my body. All my nerve endings lit up simultaneously, my neural pathways glowed. I could not make my lungs take in a breath, even for a few seconds after my head popped up above the surface. The hangover throbbing in my head was zapped free and I felt awake, alive, amazed.
I Drank Like They Did on Mad Men.
It Nearly Destroyed Me.
The martinis and Manhattans of “Mad Men” inspired a generation of 20-somethings to embrace classic cocktail culture. For me, those seven seasons of television coincided with a particularly traumatic stretch of life, the kind that makes you run toward something to help anesthetize the pain.
A Field Guide to Ohio Wildflowers
When I think about lace, I think about weddings. I think about the veil I wore the first time I got married, speckled with tiny pearls to match my gown. I think of that dress’s lace sleeves, straight from a Renaissance painting. It was the kind of dress I thought a bride should wear. I think of how, in the dressing room mirror, it felt romantic, but in the pictures it looked more like something from a Renaissance fair. I think of the doilies my ex-husband’s grandma placed on every flat surface. I think about how I was telling the truth when I said I wanted to grow old with him, and how it’s just as truthful now that I’d be fine never seeing him again.
It started out like a song.
The first time I started to imagine the outlines of my kid I was in the passenger seat, singing along to the White Stripes with the man I would marry, but I didn’t know that yet.
I hadn’t known before that moment that I wanted children, but suddenly I could see a child, mine, ours. Back to school. Brand new shoes. Books and pens.
She was a girl, always a girl, and I saw her from the ground up. Her shoes, patent leather, were sketched in first, then her backpack and a dress that looked very much like the white one I wore on my own first day of school.
Pretzel Person
I was hoisting up the dumpster lid, a bag of garbage dangling over my shoulder, a ring of perspiration circling my forehead, when I spotted him out of the corner of my eye. Ben.
“I didn’t know you worked at the mall!” he said.
Struggling to create a new life after my divorce
My daughter was approaching her fourth birthday when we moved in with Pete, the first guy I seriously dated after her dad and I split. I had one rule back then: I didn’t drink on the nights she stayed with us.
.We rented half a duplex with fantastic highway views and, steps beyond a white picket fence, an Italian cafe where a backyard should have been. For a moment in time, the cafe hired a real chef and offered a dinner menu on Friday and Saturday nights, and that moment coincided with us living there.
We had Stella every Friday night, and walking over for dinner became our ritual. Besides proximity, the real draw was the cafe had a BYOB policy. Quickly, I amended my own rule. I didn’t drink on any of the nights she stayed with us besides Friday.
This One Tiny Change Made My Daughter’s Pandemic Birthday Extra Fun
Staring down a pandemic summer without a single playdate or vacation, our youngest started clinging to the one thing she could look forward to — her August birthday. She was so excited to turn 4, we had to start a countdown calendar a month and a half out, marking off each of the 48 days until the big day. So the pressure was on to think of a safe celebration that would live up to all that pent-up anticipation.