Love Means Showing Up
There’s a great cartoon series by Emily Flake in The New Yorker about emerging from the pandemic and revealing our new, weirder selves to one another. She says, “In the grim cocoon of quarantine, I’ve metamorphosed into…someone else..or something else. Like a toad, but without the cool amphibian powers.” She tries to figure out how
As a fan of Deshaun Watson and as a feminist, I don’t know what to think about the allegations against him. My daughter Katie is a huge Deshaun Watson fan. While I have no idea who the quarterback was when I was a student at Clemson and don’t know who currently holds that position, Deshaun
It must be so exhausting for people of color to have to keep explaining their experiences to white people. Last week, yet another young white man, filled with rage and hate, shot and killed people who didn’t look like him. This time, it was eight people in Atlanta, including six women of Asian descent. Almost
I tend to underestimate how long anything will take. This tendency of mine has come up a few times in the past month as my family has moved across town. We moved on a Sunday and I expected us to sleep in our beds the first night, but the beds weren’t even in the house
My family is moving to a smaller house across town and I have discovered that we simply have too much stuff. For the past few weeks, I’ve been sorting and packing and condensing all of our possessions. Some days, I feel unstoppable; other days, I’m weeping into a pile of preschool artwork. It’s been a
If 2020 is mostly a blur, then these first few weeks of January are etched into my memory in exquisite detail. It’s like everything went from hazy to high-definition overnight. On January 5th, my son Caleb and I helped as poll watchers for the Senate run-off elections here in Georgia. We trained through the Democratic
On Christmas Eve, my oldest daughter held up the phone so my parents could watch my family open our Christmas presents from them. We’d all decided it wasn’t safe for us to see them over the holidays, so FaceTime was the best way for us to celebrate “together.” It wasn’t ideal, but I just kept
I used to assume that when wars ended, people just resumed their lives. During this pandemic, I’ve searched for a lesson from the past to help guide me through our daily lives. It’s not exactly a war, but it is a defining national crisis. I’ve needed some kind of roadmap. I asked my mom if
When our twins were five years old and on our local swim team, they were often put on the relay team. The likelihood that they would actually dive off the blocks and swim their one lap was very slim. It was so stressful to watch. The more coaches and parents encouraged them to get in
A few weeks ago, I visited my son Caleb in Ann Arbor for the first time. He’s a freshman in college and I wanted to see what his new life looked like. The town was enchanting and I loved spending a few days with him. The whole experience was reassuring and wonderful, until I drove