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Origin Story

On a catamaran cruise during our honeymoon in Jamaica, we met a couple from Canandaigua, New York. Drunk and sunburnt, I was disproportionately excited to share the coincidence that I had once lived there, too. Long ago, for about 18 months, when I was three. Just before we permanently relocated to my dad’s home state of North Carolina. From our catamaran acquaintances, I learned bits of new trivia about the town I barely remember. That they have wineries, for instance; and that boating is a popular pastime. The winery piece made sense, as I could easily imagine my young parents, with just two of the five kids they’d eventually have, moving to a place with the romantic illusion of wine-drinking during the warm weekends of their short Upstate summers. Boating was a bit of a curve-ball, since my mother was famously prone to sea-sickness and generally avoided getting her head wet in front of others. The prospect of bobbing around in a life-jacket on the fourth largest Finger Lake would no
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Recent posts

The Baseball Eulogy

Over the past few months, I've often been asked to speak on my mom's behalf among people who don't know her very well. Most recently, I was asked to describe her, to list the kinds of things she liked, so that we could surround her with them. I'll be honest, it was more difficult than it should've been. Can I tell you what she doesn't like? is what I felt like asking, because somehow that felt more informative. She was from a big family, the youngest of 4 girls, and then she had a big family, 4 girls and 1 boy--so maybe it was more efficient to lead with what you don’t like, what you won’t do, rather than get lost in the minutiae of personal preferences. I can relate to that approach. For my mom, it was perhaps too much to hope that people would cater to her likes, so she made sure the world knew what she couldn’t stand instead. Even so, there was nuance involved. Her vocal distaste for highly specific things was, in many cases, a reflection of the profound love
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Notes From The 'Rona Room

When I was in 5th and 6th grade, I spent a lot of time in my room, because that’s just what kids that age do. I wrote in my journal and listened to music that I’d recorded from the radio with my pink metallic Sidestep cassette player. I talked on the phone for hours with my friend Katie while we both watched the same bad late night TV, like Nia Peeples’ Party Machine . But a lot of the time, I just hung out, dicking around with my knick-knacks and projects, like carving designs with my fingernails into my wood paneled walls. Nobody was locking me in, but I was definitely locking other people out. I guess 12-year-olds just need a place to sit and stare in peace while they contemplate who tonight’s guest will be on The Arsenio Hall Show .  I’m now midway through Day 9 of my 10 days in COVID isolation and it’s been eerily similar. I’m less of a phone-talker these days, but there’s been a lot of texting with my family, friends, and my old friend Katie, especially. She’s got kids now, so I
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Thoughts and Prayers

When you tell people you have a potentially serious illness, they’re understandably concerned. When you describe yourself as “not religious” in the very same post, there’s bound to be some confusion about how to proceed. Do I say I’ll pray for her? Or should I just say I’ll be thinking of her really hard… but also reverently… and most likely while kneeling with my hands pressed together? This is particularly true of family members, like my sister, who grew up going to church with me and who was compelled to ask, “But you do believe in God… right?” I grew up Catholic, because my parents were Catholic and because most of their family on all sides was also Catholic. I went to Catholic school from preschool through sixth grade--because my mom was Irish Catholic from New York City and that’s just what you did; and because my dad’s mom, whom we lived with growing up, was French. Not French like she grew up near Canada or had a maiden name that was fourteen letters and the last 5 were silent.
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The Next Right Thing

Over the course of the pandemic, the boys and I have made a running joke out of several songs from the Frozen movie franchise. The correlation between a cinematic celebration of sisterhood and a real-life global plague may not seem obvious at first. But stay with me... Our initial favorite was "For The First Time In Forever". This is the one where Anna is so excited about all the things she's going to get to do "for the first time in forever" because her sister is finally letting people come to the castle. They've been "quarantined" for about a decade because her sister is...well...an ice monster. Meanwhile, Elsa's upstairs, pacing and muttering (musically, of course) that "it's only for today", verbally rehearsing all the things she has to do to keep from making "one wrong move" and accidentally freezing all her guests to death. Six months into a pandemic, I think we can all see the parallels between our world and thos
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So You Caught The 'Rona...

Before I had kids, I remember watching a bit by this comedian Ron White. It was about building up a facetious alias around town, calling himself "Tater Salad". Ron White has a drunken-Bill-Clinton vibe about himself and always performs holding a rocks glass with about two-fingers worth of brown liquor in it. He tells a story about getting arrested and having the opportunity to say, "Yep. You caught the 'Tater". Or something to that extent. I thought of The 'Tater yesterday morning as I clicked on the results from my COVID-19 test and unfortunately, got to tell myself, "Yep. You caught the 'Rona."   Now that I've officially got it, I'm happy to share my experience. For one, so that other people can know what to look for--but also because my mother will assume that I'm dead unless I keep the communication coming. With that in mind, you might consider this a public service announcement directed at family and friends, entitled "So
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What To Expect From Quarantine Homeschool

With most of the country’s kids out of school due to the coronavirus, you might be wondering what to expect from your first swing at homeschooling. Well...it might look a little something like this: 6:50: Your child who’s never up before 7:30 on a regular day is ready for “school”. You are not yet wearing pants. You encourage your kids to get dressed, enjoy their Aldi Toaster Tarts, and binge-watch early episodes of The Simpsons while you get your shit together. 9:00: Time for math. You display a visual timer app that lets them know when this 30-minute block of learning will be over. Your kids still ask you “how much longer?” every 90 seconds. 9:15: Your third grader attempts to mansplain perimeter vs. area to you with total confidence, even though he’s dead wrong about it.   9:20: Your first and third graders repeatedly challenge your knowledge of basic addition and multiplication. You repeatedly remind them that you somehow made it all the way through grad sc
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