“Two hundred dollars! Do I hear three?” the auctioneer’s voice boomed through the dusty livestock exchange, hammering the final nail into my family’s coffin. I stood frozen by the metal […]
When the boy who made my life miserable in high school tracked me down a decade later and begged me to have dinner with him, I honestly thought he was […]
Maya was born during a thunderstorm in early April, and my daughter Claire called me from the hospital at three in the morning to say the baby had arrived and […]
The leather check holder sat in the center of the table like something that had been placed there with ceremony, which in a way it had. Twelve thousand, four hundred […]
At 10:17 on Sunday morning, my mother’s name appeared on my phone screen. I watched the call come in, and I chose not to answer it. I already knew exactly […]
On my wedding day, my husband and I were eating burgers in our wedding clothes when he pulled a folded legal letter from his pocket and made me question every […]
My mother was not a sentimental person. She would tell you this herself, in the same direct way she told you most things, without apology and without the softening that […]
For eight years, I had been the easy wife. Greg made the big decisions; I handled the house and our six-year-old son, Leo, and whenever we disagreed, I usually let […]
I want to start with who Leo is on his best days, because the best days are the context for everything that followed and because it would be easy to […]
Some moments make you proud to be a parent. Others make you question everything you thought you had taught your child. The night my fourteen-year-old son mocked our waiter with […]