My mother loved fabric. Her basement held hundreds of bolts up to fifty yards each, which means she could have unfurled a textile train over fifteen miles long. Fabric sat in tall stacks on her sturdy sewing-room workbench. The bottom bolts were flush with the bench’s front, but the stacks gradually leaned back as they…
Today, my eldest son reached the age—in years, months, and days—that I was the day my father died. I've marked the days my husband and I both reached my father’s age at his death, and today I mark the day for my son. Because that’s something one can actually do about death: mark the day.…
Why do we write—why especially do we write real life—without knowing what we're creating? Without a conscious plan? Because our lives happen minute to minute and there's nothing we can do about it. Sometimes, as we're trying to "stay present," and the future is coming up and up and up, and the past is growing…
I was visiting my twin sons' school today, sitting in the hall just outside the preschool office, when they walked by. J & R were holding hands on one side of a teacher. On her other side, she held the hand of a fellow three-year-old, a boy I hadn't met before, no doubt a new…
We bought a house. Twenty-two years after moving out of my mother’s house (which means 22 years after living in a house at all, which also means 22 years since meeting my husband), we have, together, bought a house. Exactly 75 miles west (as the crows flies) from my childhood home, and 41 miles northeast…
Suzanne Farrell Smith 