The pain of conditioning my daughter for public school

Earlier this summer, I saw that an editor at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins, was looking for stories about education. I dashed off a quick note, saying that I'd been chewing on an idea for an essay about the tension between conditioning my 5yo daughter for public school at the same time I'm trying to let go …

Uggghhh

It's an ugh day— steamy here in NYC, air so thick you could cut it (or slather it all over you like swampy lotion). I have a blister on my foot that's screaming and I had to run an errand and then the person didn't show up and traffic on that block was awful and …

Gimme a five

My daughter is five today. Five. years. old. Five years of mothering. Mother: A verb, meaning, "to love in agony and elation." FIVE YEARS. Oh she talks and my heart melts. Oh her sweet little hand. Her bottom. Oh how I sometimes still long for freedom. For quiet. For a morning of meandering in laziness and …

I’ve given up on losing the baby weight

It's official: I've given up on losing the rest of the "baby weight." She's almost five, now, by the way, so I guess it's really the "child weight" — it arrived when I was pregnant but stuck around to see the little one grow up. Can't blame it for sentimentality. Happens to the best of …

What’s knocking at the door of your life?

Last night I had a dream that someone or something was knocking, and it represented getting a step closer to becoming a full-time artist, and in my dream, I said to myself, "This is a perfect metaphor for what I'm going through — I should blog about it tomorrow." (Yes, I am apparently scouting for …

Improvising parenthood

I realized: In clinging to my connection with my daughter, I am trying to control it, and, in a way, to control her. And I can't. And I don't want to.

A love letter to my 4-year-old daughter, aka “Brave Girl”

I do not mean to suggest it's all rainbows and cupcakes. Of course there are times when it is grueling and heartbreaking and dull. But I am a better person for being her mother.

Daughter

It's Father's Day and I'm thinking about daughters.

About being one. About having one, a 4-year-old, and about what I was like at that age. It was around that time that I started pulling out all my eyelashes...

Talking with Betsy Stover About Being Mentored by Amy Poehler, Improvising Marriage and Home Ec

I met Betsy when she was eight months pregnant and teaching an improv class I was taking at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in NYC...

I Can’t. (Confessions of a Perfectionist Mother)

Battling it out with that old demon, Perfectionism, as it rears its ugly head in my relationship with my daughter.