“Nice shot Claire!” yelled the man sitting next to me. I barely knew him, but he was a parent of another girl on the basketball team. The shot had actually bounced off the rim of the basketball hoop, but this random father was still yelling encouragement to Claire. She looked in our direction. I gave […]
Family & Friends
The Letter
The letter arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. It was addressed to me. Inside, I found two notes from an old friend of Shawn’s – someone he knew in university who we’d kept up with over the years. “I wrote a note to Claire,” the first note said, “and I want you to […]
Salsa in my Cup
Two years ago, Shawn and I threw a party that was particularly crazy. We didn’t really mean for the party to get so wild. We just wanted to have a few friends over to celebrate the year and toast our successes, failures, and ability to have merely survived. As I remember, we were still reeling […]
Lockdown
For many years, when we did lockdown drills at school, I always texted Shawn to tell him about it. Last week, I sat through my first drill without him.
Field Trips, Open Houses and Other Events I Can’t Attend Anymore
The other day I was sorting through the kids’ paperwork after school and came across a permission slip for a field trip for Claire. I signed it, and then was putting it on my calendar when Claire came over to me. I asked her about what she thought she was going to do on the […]
Talking to My Kids About Death, Again
Many years ago, when Claire was about 5, she was just starting to understand the concept of death. One day at school she learned from a friend that people can die of all sorts of diseases. This peaked her curiosity and she asked me about a dozen questions that night. “But how do people get […]