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Talking Football at the Kitchen Island
The raised voices drew me closer to my kitchen counter. “No way, man, the Bears are terrible,” I heard one man say. “If you think you’re going to tell me that they are better than the Vikings, I have to remind you about that quarterback of yours!” I smiled. I was hosting an event for parents from my kids’ elementary school, and a group of men were gathered around my kitchen island. They were talking about football, I figured, and so I wasn’t really comprehending the specifics. Instead, I just listened to how they teased each other, and the good-natured laughing that interrupted their increasingly excited claims about various teams.…
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So Close. And Yet So Far Away.
Right after Shawn died, I boxed up a number of his shirts, certain that I’d do something meaningful with them. I never did. Even after I cleaned out his side of the closet and added even more clothes to the box, I felt paralyzed about what to do. Then, out of nowhere, an old friend from high school contacted me to volunteer to make a quilt out of his old shirts. I took her up on it, shipped her the clothes and forgot about it. It took a few months, but early this fall, I got the final product. It literally took my breath away. There were his shirts, all…
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Home Base
In the spring of 2016, I went to a party with Shawn at Momofuku. The firm that had invited Shawn to the event had rented out the entire restaurant. The night before, we had been talking about our upcoming days, and he said, “I’ll be a little bit late. I have to go to this thing at some new restaurant.” The second I found out it was Momofuku, I freaked out and immediately began texting babysitters. “I’m coming too!” I told him. Shawn always loved that I liked his parties more than he did. I would spend the evenings trying new food and drinking with the most interesting people. Frequently,…
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Flatwood Willie
The thing about being way out in the country is that there’s no trash pickup. It makes you acutely aware of exactly how much garbage you produce, especially when you have to frequently pack it all up in your car and then drive to dispose of it. So on our recent trip out to rural Virginia, I found myself headed to the dump. I didn’t really know where it was, so I kept slowing down on the highway. People behind me must have been irritated, but no one honked. As I pulled into the dump, a man greeted me. “I saw you headed here,” he said, “and you kept slowing…
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Nights at the Kitchen Counter
When Shawn was alive, we reconnected most nights in the kitchen after the kids went to sleep. They were all so young back then, and went to bed by 8 pm, always. We treasured the few hours together that we got without them. (Oh how he would hate Claire’s new bedtime of 9 pm!) Anyway, each night we’d both come down to the kitchen, and usually he’d re-heat food I made earlier in the evening or put something else in the oven. I’d sit at the counter and we’d talk about our days. I often had some drama from school (the staff meeting went way too long, or some student…
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Wisps of a Dream
I was walking through a cave, and I felt like it was somewhere I’d been before. Other people (tourists, maybe?) were standing and talking softly on the edges of my vision. The cave was cool, but I could hear a dull roar in the distance. Shawn was next to me. I knew this shouldn’t be true – I knew he was dead – but there he was, standing upright with a slight smile on his face. He didn’t talk much, but then again, Shawn could always be a bit quiet when he was exploring a new space. We walked through the cave. It smelled of salt, and there was a…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
