Month: July 2017

My Italian Holiday Taught Me to Drink Aglianico and Celebrate the Everyday

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“Our leathered, weather-beaten landlord left fresh figs, tomatoes and lemons when he stopped by. He couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak Italian so we talked with our hands and figured things out. When we were walking to the beach one afternoon, we saw him zipping down the street—shirtless—in shorts and flip-flops on his Vespa. This was his life. He looked over the Mediterranean every day, from whatever point of town he happened to be in, his full head of hair flying in the wind. This old Italian man, with his figs, tomatoes and lemons and view was a rich man in many ways.”

Read in full on Paste Magazine.

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I was late to pick up my kid once. I’ll never do it again.

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I was late to pick up my kid once. I'll never do it again.

“He’s 16 now, but he still remembers that day. When my kid hurts, I hurt myself, too. My absence at the end of the school day didn’t match my words at the beginning when I said I’d be waiting for him when school let out and summer began. This experience crystalized for me that punctuality is essentially making good on a promise. I was accountable to my 7-year-old, and it crushed him when another mom instead of his own showed up. My actions had inadvertently communicated that he was less important than my work, when in fact, my noblest work is wrapped up in being his mother.”

Read in full on The Week.

Through the Sand: A Driving Lesson From Dubai

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Image 7-10-17 at 3.54 PMRead in full at The Manifest-Station. “I posed a million-dirham ($272,260.72 into today’s US dollar) question: “Do the children of Dubai play in sandboxes?” Our family, newly transplanted from the Washington, DC area where sandboxes had provided our children with hours of fun in earlier years, mulled over this question the summer we moved temporarily to the desert metropolis of Dubai. Even with all of Dubai’s development, if one catapulted high enough above the impressive skyline, Dubai seemed not too unlike one massive sandbox with ribbons of various roads lying thickly near the coast and rapidly thinning out in numbers the further away from the sandbox’s edge of the Arabian Sea, until only interminable sand remained.

The subject of driving, however, quickly claimed our attention as it rapidly morphed to the level of top priority. This critical arena of living required quick-study because learning this new turf involved navigating Dubai’s roads, roads which often betrayed the foundation they were laid upon: sand.

Continue reading “Through the Sand: A Driving Lesson From Dubai” →

Our Nomadic Lifestyle Was the Best Gift We Ever Gave Our Kids

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My husband and I were living in Germany when I became pregnant for the first time. I had no idea back then how our daughter’s birth overseas would be the beginning of a family narrative that would shape my children’s lives so distinctly.

I received my doctor’s hearty approval—Kein Problem! — to vacation in Tuscany two months before my due-date. With great expectations, we joined our old German friends, transported to Florence in their sleek black Mercedes. Perhaps my doctor would have felt regret a few days later had he witnessed my husband and me standing in the wrong queue at the spectacular Il Duomo. We believed we were in line to see the cathedral, not climb to the top of the dome.

So it was, at 7-months pregnant I found myself climbing the notoriously winding, narrow stairwell of the Il Duomo. Four-hundred sixty-three steps with baby inside. It was claustrophobic. The air was stale. The thickness of other sweaty human beings clambering to the top pressed unforgivingly into my personal space: my rounded belly. Back on solid earth, I thought of what would have happened had I gone into labor then and there, in that tight, dank, ancient stairwell. I’d taken a risk, but since everything had turned out well, I was overjoyed to have that glorious view over Florence forever printed in my mind.

The mysterious relationship between pregnant woman and her unborn child is elusive. I was going on with my unorthodox life, carting my little unborn daughter along, unmindful of injecting a spirit of adventure in her.

We grew to be a family of four and lived for a short time in Dubai. Arabic music delighted us and we acclimated to the call of worship punctuating the air throughout the day.

Read the full story on SheKnows.

#Happenings: Recap of NYT Modern Love event and more…

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What’s going on with me? Writing is a slow, difficult journey–always. While I have been writing, revising, editing and submitting essays here and there and everywhere, I’ve also been learning, listening, reading and growing in the art of the writing craft. Going forward, I’m going to be sharing resources and various things I’m learning here with you. So, let’s get started!
Last week, I attended the The New York Times Modern Love event featuring Editor Daniel Jones interviewing the witty columnists Ada Calhoun and Mandy Len Cantron. As a fan of the column and writer myself, it was the highlight of my week. Ada and Mandy provided lively and entertaining banter about love and long-term relationships. Their recently published books are expansions of their essays, published by NYT Modern Love (look them up!).
The popular Modern Love column offers amazing writing and thoughtful perspectives, all owing to the genius of Dan Jones, who curates the column. And if you enjoy podcasts, I heartily recommend subscribing to the exceptionally well-produced Modern Love podcast. #NYTModernLove #love #loss #redemption
On final thing. I do have essays pending publication and I can’t wait to share them with you!