My heart sped up as I listened to Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms speak last weekend: Let me just speak to what’s happening here today. Above everything else, I am a mother. I am a mother to four black children in America, one of whom is 18 years old. And when I saw the murder […]
single parenting
5th Grade Graduation
Today is your last day of 5th grade. When you were just 5 years old, you held the hands of both of your parents as you stood on the big field, waiting for the first day of kindergarten. It was loud and filled with hundreds of people and you were uncharacteristically quiet. Your eyes were […]
How Does This Actually Work?
I re-read the headline three times before I could really process it. “DC students could be in classrooms just 1 or 2 days per week this fall.” I knew this could be coming. I mean, of course there has to be a plan for alternative schooling for next school year. But, um, how does this […]
How Widowed Parenting Prepared Me for Coronavirus Parenting
I looked over at Tommy as he ate breakfast yesterday and realized that he looked just like an advertisement for bad parenting. He was shirtless, watching a Captain Underpants movie on an iPad and eating Eggo waffles that he was liberally dipping in syrup. He wasn’t even using a fork. I thought about taking a […]
My Nine-Year-Old Boy
We found out that you were a boy on Christmas Day. We had asked the ultrasound technician to put the sex of our second child in an envelope, and then we opened it together with our extended family. A boy! That night, we drove back to where we were staying. Claire was in the back […]
Can I Take Out the Trash?
(I wrote the piece below for an outside publication a few months ago. It didn’t end up running, so I’m publishing it here. Obviously, some of the details are from a time when we could interact with people outside our household.) I’ve been worrying about my boys lately. Not for any specific reason. I mean, […]