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Pistachio Nuts, Epipens and Friends
Last Thursday was a great day. Claire tried out for the local rock climbing team, and since I don’t have childcare in the summer, I took the boys to watch. They had fun too, and we all drove home with the windows down and the music blasting. I put frozen taquitos in the oven for my kids as we all re-lived the fun we’d had that afternoon. And then I almost ended up in the ER. You see, I’m super allergic to tree nuts, and somehow, I’d ordered a salmon meal for my dinner that contained pistachio nuts. In my haste to get everyone’s food ready, I didn’t read the…
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I Am Someone New, Too
My sister had a baby last month. I was abroad when it happened, and I spent hundreds of dollars that day on my phone bill. I could hear the thrill of new parenthood in her voice, even just a few hours after she became a mom. I went to visit her a few weeks later. The second I saw her, I felt like I was going to start crying. There she was, holding her baby in a sling on her chest. The baby was sleeping. And my sister was beaming. In that moment, I could see it. My sister was the person she’d always been: thoughtful, and with a great…
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Lost
Getting lost in a foreign country is never a good idea. It happened to me all the time before I started traveling with Shawn. I’d be somewhere by myself, in a country where I didn’t speak the language, and I’d realize that I was lost. I always managed to find my way home, though sometimes this meant that I lost a whole day of traveling or, worse, made some dubious decisions like getting in cars with strangers. But once I met Shawn we never got lost. On our first big trip we went to Vietnam (which wasn’t actually that far, as we were living in Japan) and there was a…
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Sundance or Sunscreen?
I was walking on the beach with my dear friend Kelly one day a few months ago. We were talking about everything that you talk about with a friend you’ve known for 20 years – our families, our careers, our futures. The sun was setting as we walked, and I took a moment to let the water run over my toes and to feel really alive. It’s great to feel that way. When it happens, I often find myself able to think about the future. At that point in my life, I’d just ended the first romance I’d been in since Shawn’s death. I was reeling from the emotions that…
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The Last Day of School
At the end of every school year, I have to create an individual report for every student in each of my classes. I write things like, “Jack has shown strong growth in historical writing this year, as shown by…” They are sometimes dry, though I try to show the parents of my students how much their kids have learned by using specific examples. Still, I know it’s really only part of what they learn in my class. Do they know how to support their argument in writing or analyze the Constitution in a debate? This stuff is important. But it’s not all of what I do in class. Trying to…
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The Oklahoma Clarks
I was upstairs packing last week, and I could hear Austin talking with a friend downstairs. “I can’t come over tomorrow because we’re going to see our cousins. We’re flying on a plane to Oklahoma!” Technically, we were traveling to see his second cousins. My cousin, Ellen, had moved with her family to Oklahoma a number of years ago and I’d never been to visit even though Ellen and I have always been really close. “Oklahoma?” everyone asked with skepticism when I mentioned I was going there. “What are you going to do there?” “I’m going to see my family,” I said. Was any other explanation needed? Everyone who has…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
