My mom recently told me she thought I’d lost my ambition. Her comment stung. I know she didn’t mean for it to; it was just her observation. It had me thinking, though: Was my ambition gone? I was super ambitious in high school. Geek confession: I retook Algebra 2 during summer school just to change a B to an A and preserve my perfect GPA, which was later ruined by AP Biology. Ah well. I learned my lesson and let go of some of that need for perfection in college…until I graduated and jumped head first into a New York City-based publishing career. But then life happened and I moved back to my hometown – where publishing jobs were very limited – got married and settled down, even though I hadn’t planned to stay for long. A decade later, my roots are planted pretty deep. And yet, I’ve still managed to pursue my dreams: I earned a Master’s degree in writing, I found a job in publishing, and my husband and I started a family. There are still dreams I have yet to fulfill: to travel … [Read more...]
A Wish To Be Younger
I’m not exactly sure how old my grandmother was when she passed away (80 something, I think) because, at some point in her later years, she decided to count her birthdays backwards. Now, I know you can’t age backwards but I did lose track of her age. She hated getting older. That much was evident. Whenever I asked what she wanted (like for her birthday), she’d say “my youth” in a begrudging tone like someone had stolen it from her. She told me so many stories from her younger days; I wish I had written them down. She was a great storyteller and I credit her for inspiring that in me. (She also inspired in me a love of books, travel and Broadway musicals.) Our relationship wasn’t always a fairytale, though. The MomMom, as I called her, of my youth wasn’t the woman I got to know as a young adult. And I suppose I wasn’t the young spirit she had indulged with too many Barbies, either. We had a falling out when I graduated college that took me until September 11, 2001 to get over (funny … [Read more...]
A Parisian Dessert
I’ve had a love affair with French cuisine for as long as I can remember but my first meal in Paris was not exactly lovely. The meal came at the end of a two-hour walking tour of Paris that was preceded by a full day of touring Versailles on the very first day of a six-week college trip to France. I was tired, jet-lagged and starving but grateful my professor had finally stopped to let us eat. She picked a restaurant we found along on our route that featured a prix fixe menu. I remember the entree choices – in French, of course – were horse burger or fish. I chose the fish. It was the safe option. Or so I thought until it arrived whole from head to tail, eyeballs, bones and all. I spent more time picking out the bones than I did eating the actual fish. This meal did not bode well for the rest of my trip. Fortunately, aside from a meal featuring couscous that left me with a terrible stomach bug, my culinary experiences in France were for the most part positive. My favorite lunchtime … [Read more...]
Joining the Club
Many years ago, way before I had my son, when I was just a single gal with married friends starting families, it annoyed me when those friends insinuated that I just didn’t get “it” because I wasn’t a mother. That I couldn’t understand what it was like to be one until I joined this exclusive club myself. Ok, maybe not. But then explain it to me. I could certainly empathize(or maybe its sympathize) that becoming a mother was indeed a big change. Yeah, not so much. I was naive. It is one of those experiences that you just can’t fully comprehend until you’ve lived it yourself – the monotonous first days, weeks and months; having to take care of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING for this tiny, human being from the big things like feedings and diaper changes to the little things you take for granted for yourself like clipping fingernails; watching the sun set on a long day, being bone tired, and realizing that the work day is not over yet, not by a long shot. And I wondered, why had one that no one … [Read more...]
Musings About Art
I’m reading The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova for the From Left to Write Book* club. Its a rather long book so its taking me a while to get through it but I am enjoying it. Its a mystery, which I love, about a psychiatrist who’s trying to find out why his deliberately silent patient attacked a painting at the National Gallery in Washington DC. So far, art is a major theme in this book and every time I pick it up I think about my own experiences with art. I’m not much of an artist by any means but long ago and far away I had a love for working with pastels and studying the Impressionists. I think it began the summer after seventh grade when I attended a summer camp focused on writing and painting. We took a field trip to the National Gallery and that’s where I first set my eyes on the works of Monet, Degas and Renoir – Monet, not to be confused with Manet, was my favorite. I spent the rest of my summer sketching in pastel and writing poetry inspired by their works. There’s a … [Read more...]
