The Secondary Mourner
What does that make us—the former in-laws and spouses? The family friends? We are mourners once removed, like second cousins no one’s ever met. Technically family, practically not.
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Glad Hall: On the Cycles of Home
Houses hold memories -- even if not all of them are good ones. They hold the life of a family -- its beginnings, its end.
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Hot Milk Sponge Cake: On the Stories Recipes Remember
Recipes themselves appeal to me because they are small and finite: little works. You set yourself a goal, pursue and finish it, it doesn’t take very long. That’s the opposite of what I spend my time doing. The longest, most complicated recipe I ever made took me a day. A novel takes years.
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Thankful for Such Friends
What constitutes friendship? What defines it? Proximity? Duration? Frequency?
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When This You See, Remember Me
Getting rid of the clothing of someone who has died is almost a cliché, heavily metaphorical however you look at it. So it was a surprise that, within weeks of my mother’s death, my father wanted her clothes out of the house. Everything, gone.
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Outside the Box: From Teaching to Tea Parties
I could hear it in her voice when we spoke, her panic. She didn’t know what to do. She’d put in time and money to get that degree, there was supposed to be work at the end of it, and there wasn’t.
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