I’m sitting at the top of the hill that overlooks the Saint Francis Xavier playground where we take Eli every afternoon. Charlie and Eli are running up and down the hill, up and down the slides, sliding backwards and sideways and upside down, laughing. I’m sitting at the top of the hill, 9 months pregnant [...]
There’s no big explanation. Overall, I felt like I didn’t have anything to say. And then I felt pressure to say something- anything- until the words returned to me. And then I shut down. And the season passed. And one day, I looked out of my living room window down the dusty street crowded with [...]
I remember waking up in the birthing center a year ago today, small baby sleeping on my chest- where he’d been all night- brand new, smelling like the earth, with a little velvet head and ten fingers and tiny little orange eyebrows. His small round eyes would open up every so often, deep cobalt blue [...]
I’ve never been a fan of New Years Eve. All the fanfare, all the pressure to have some amazing, spectacular, unique holiday, the talk around the water cooler the next morning, coffee clutched tightly in each hungover hand- “what did you do for New Years?” In middle school, all of my girlfriends would get together [...]
During my college years, there was a UPS driver in my neighborhood that we called “The Beautiful Man”. Not because he was beautiful, per say, but because he had a habit of saying, “Hi, Beautiful” every time he saw one of us. I get the feeling we aren’t the only women he greeted this way, [...]
This summer, a community of ants took over Leo’s food bowl. I remember coming into the kitchen one morning hot and sticky from bed, bleary eyed with the baby on one hip, starting the water for coffee with my free hand… and there they were marching toward Leo’s food bowl with a certain dutiful reverence. [...]
Dr. H, I went through all of my high school English class papers tonight just to read your notes. I took out the book of poetry by Billy Collins- the one you found so challenging to enjoy. You gave me a copy when I graduated and wrote, “Elissa– You are the woman! Love Dr H”. [...]
The chill of fall quickly infiltrated the state of Vermont, crushing the warmth and fun of summer in its wake. I took the baby for a walk last week and though it was warm I knew that fall was looming. The air just has this way about it- the damp, heavy, thick air of August [...]
There’s a stop sign on the road in front of our house and for some unexplainable reason, drivers feel the need to rev their engines and peel out at this stop sign, right in front of our living room. It’s not like stop signs are a rare occurrence in Winooski. There’s a stop sign every [...]
When I stepped into my driveway on Saturday evening it was the perfect late summer dusk. The sky was streaked with pinks and oranges and thin clouds stretched across the horizon. Beautiful as it was, it was dead calm. Not a leaf stirred, not a plant rustled or swayed, and all I could think was, [...]