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Motherhood and Metamorphosis
We’re raising monarch caterpillars again this year, for the third time in a row. It’s a fascinating process, watching the changes–from a tiny yellowish-white egg about the size of a nonpareil sprinkle, to a sliver of caterpillar you can barely see with your naked eye, and then finally, after several shed caterpillar skins and a (…) MORE »
Acceptance
For the last few months, my nine-year-old son has been playing around with a program called Scratch that lets kids learn how to create and program their own computer games and animations. He’s come a long way, mostly teaching himself everything he knows, but he’s never been able to create a game that works the (…) MORE »
All Important Things Are Hard
In second grade, we had an assignment to answer questions about ourselves, and one of the questions was what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote “horse trainer,” even though the closest I’d been to a horse was playing with my plastic Breyer horse figurines. My teacher, bless her, looked at me (…) MORE »
The Reluctant Valentine
When I was a sophomore in college, my boyfriend and I broke up a few days before Valentine’s Day. I was sitting on my front porch on Valentine’s, probably brooding about how romance was one big steaming crock of horse hooey, when a girl walked past holding a lavish bouquet of flowers. She beamed over (…) MORE »
Living the Lives We Want
I know it’s kind of a cliche, but I always feel a fresh burst of energy in the new year. One of my goals for 2012 was to get up early, before my two kids wake up, and do some writing first thing in the morning. For years, I told myself I couldn’t get up (…) MORE »
A Neighborhood Crime Wave, A Community Meeting, and A Question from My Daughter
I adore my inner-city St. Paul neighborhood. We’re rich in musicians, artists, and community activists, rich in potlucks and backyard chicken flocks and funky native wildflower gardens. But I have to say the crime news around here has been mighty discouraging. The summer was peppered with reports of garage break-ins and house burglaries. Things calmed (…) MORE »
