The worst part is the feeling of the strain, the empty weight of impotence in your throat. Your mouth opens again – if you try harder, someone will hear, someone will help. Most of us know that dream, the one in which you are in mortal danger, trying to scream for help, or in protest, or simply to speak to explain, yet no sound emerges – you are voiceless. The real-life analogue is less dramatic than the scenarios spun by the horror-writer of the subconscious, but no less disempowering. And waking up is more difficult. The disconnect between the instructions... Continue reading

A few nights ago, I went with a friend to a club in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. I tend to look at clothing as costume – what role am I playing today? – so I’d deliberately chosen an outfit to suit the evening. Short skirt, knee-high boots, leather jacket, acres of cleavage – basically light-years and numerous personae away from my default soccer/basketball mom uniform of jeans and scoop-neck T-shirt. I suppose it wouldn’t be shocking for me to say, “The outfit made me nervous.” After all, I’m a suburban mom cruising rapidly toward 45. Many of my... Continue reading

Welcome to Valentine's Day -- the day for either random Roman tortures or the commercialization of couplehood. Scrolling through Facebook this morning, I saw one or two articles on "Being your own Valentine" and a plethora of paeons to pairing. I identify as polyamorous, a GrecoLatin hybrid loosely translating as many loves. One question I get from those brave enough to ask is, "So, you're really just sort of casually dating, right? I mean, you can't really LOVE multiple people; it would dilute out." We have this notion of romantic love as something with a defined beginning and defined end... Continue reading

I have a shameful confession. I read the Fifty Shades of Grey books…all three of them. I just read them for the mystery, honest! For the most part the writing was the sort of over-done, yet simultaneously shallow, cotton-candy fiction that tastes sweet in the moment but leaves one feeling nauseated, hollow, and sticky in a not-good way. In retrospect, however, I’m most ashamed of having enjoyed the sex scenes. “Well, duhhhh,” you say. That’s the whole point. The sort of “kinky” sex sensationalized in the books is supposed to provoke shame, to titillate with taboo. That’s why the upcoming... Continue reading

Don’t teach my daughters to fear. Show them instead how to go into the wild places the forests and deserts the labyrinths of concrete, asphalt the frost, flame, and famine of their own bodies, minds, hearts. Let them leave long blue hairs on lovers’ beds. Let them carve paths in the mosaic cobblestones of foreign cities and drink too much beer in a smoky polyglot hubub. Let them shorten their skirts, tattoo their breasts, and raise their voices in the throb of human music. Let them dig with their minds, unearthing the truths buried in statistics. Let them weave solutions... Continue reading

“What’s that on your arm? Have you been bar-coded or prison tattooed?” My oldest daughter was hanging out on my couch before biking across town to her dad’s house, and we were doing the post-last-day-of-school debrief. She looked at her arm and chuckled, explaining that since she didn’t buy a yearbook, a friend had signed her arm, which, she said, was better than her forehead. “What’s it say?” “#GAYVASIAN2014. That’s what he put in everyone’s yearbook. He’s gay and very, very proud of it.” She grinned and laughed the sort of amused, partially delighted laugh she has over any of... Continue reading

Normally I try not to pay much attention to comments on my posts or articles. It’s almost impossible to write in the age of the internet and take such things seriously. That way lies madness. But the last few weeks, I’ve felt sensitized to the endless division and judgment that has become so much a part of computer culture. I’m tired, again, of people judging those they’ve never met, of calling names or saying things in public fora that they would never say in person. It feels cowardly and slimy and mean. We’re all guilty of it to some extent.... Continue reading

I am a librarian’s daughter. Whatever else I have been or become, I am always this. It doesn’t matter that I’m in my 40s with children of my own or that my mom hasn’t been the school librarian since I was in college. The end of summer brings memories of new lunch boxes, weirdly stiff shoes, and books. Boxes of crisp-covered, tight-paged books. Books with virgin pages that I would be the first to caress. Books that would give me secret knowledge unclaimed by my peers. It didn’t matter that my peers were oblivious to said knowledge or that they... Continue reading

This poor blog has been neglected over the past year, and with reason. Last October, my husband and I separated, and I've been trying to decide how I want to mesh my personal writing and personal life. Many of these things will become clear over time, and I have no desire to tell any story but my own. However, because I've written much on family and relationships, and will likely continue to do so, it needs to be said that he is a wonderful man, fabulous co-parent, and is and will always be very dear to me. From time to... Continue reading

Everything I love about the hour around dawn has coalesced. The chill, silent breeze embraces the deck where I curl into a futon, glad for my sweatshirt and jeans. A blank notebook, the first after a too-long hiatus, is propped against my knees. A thump echoes behind my right shoulder. The tree just missed my head. I pick up the lumpy green apple, salute the tree and the rising sun peeking from behind the hill, and take a bite. Clicking my pen, I begin to write. The tree threw an apple at me, so I thanked it for my snack.... Continue reading

Have you ever noticed that the closer you get to something you really want – attaining a goal, buying a house, embarking on a new relationship, graduating from school – the more afraid, sad, and downright dissatisfied your mind becomes? What’s up with that? On the one hand, you can see where you want to be; it’s right there, just at the end of the road. And you’re rubbing your feet together in bed in excitement the way you did when you were a kid on Christmas Eve or before a trip to Disneyland or the day before the public... Continue reading

The hiking boots collapsed into a heap on the floor, crumpled socks tossed by their soles. The journey had ended. “When is the story over? How do you know it’s over?” a friend asked me a while ago. We were talking then about the stories we tell ourselves, the tales we spin of memory and emotion, the stories that grow, if we aren’t paying attention, to define us. Another friend, with whom there have been innumerable endings and beginnings, once said during a similar discussion, “Yeah, but there are always sequels.” When do our stories end? When does the final... Continue reading

When I first started writing this blog, it didn't have much of a purpose other than to get the things trapped inside my head some oxygen. It literally began because "It seemed like a good idea at the time." However, over the past half-decade or so, an embryonic glimmer of a purpose has begun to unfold. I've found that I often write to try to give space to the things many of us may feel, but may feel are not "appropriate," not "shiny," or just not "what we are supposed to feel." As I've wandered down this path toward my... Continue reading

Last night at a second grade parent meeting, the teacher talked about some of the changes in the children this spring. The girls in particular, she said, were experiencing a shift. In the Waldorf curriculum, teachers identify a developmental stage known as the Nine Year Change. Simply put, this is the period when children begin to realize that they are individuals, distinct from their parents and friends. The world is no longer a cozy dreamland. They begin to sense their own mortality and their own isolation. This recognition of the self as an individual is extremely painful for many. As... Continue reading

A ewe picks her lamb out of the flock of other wobbly, frolicking cotton puffs – recognizing her baby by sound and smell. Horses separated from their herdmates call back and forth across fields and canyons, screaming their fear, excitement, and isolation. Animals are wired for connection. For many species, herd, pack, or flock instincts promote survival from predation or, in the case of predators, facilitate hunting. Community bonds enable them to eat, mate, fend off or avoid attack, and raise their young. The human animal has the same needs – food, safety, sex, nurturing. We are wired for community... Continue reading

I Swirls of rose and leaf wings fill the smile between the girl’s shirt and jeans as she bends to scoop the fallen napkin from the wind-tossed grass. Tramp stamp Her black eyeliner is suspect, this tidier of public spaces in low-rise denim and textured hair. She crumples the paper, spitting into the folds, scrubbing – in the eternal gesture of motherhood – Welfare mother at the jam-blotched face in the stroller before her. Her waist rolls as she bends, cresting between shirt and jeans. Fat slut II The spiky black legs of letters crawl across the backs of his... Continue reading

Note: It isn't often that I share poetry publicly, so please be gentle. This emerged from a "failed" long run yesterday in which I wound up with an incapacitating IT band strain and had to quit two miles short of my goal. But the events started me thinking about the effects of time, not just on our bodies, but how we see ourselves and our challenges. The first two miles pound out in creaking joints and calves of jelly. Gratitude for the gift of a red light, stretching at the signal with the feigned impatience of a real athlete The... Continue reading

Since winter break dissolved into the new year, our lives have been very 8th-grade-centric. With the start of basketball season started, and Saturdays have taken place in a gym in Fair Oaks. Fiction writing, play practice, a snow trip, a dance, the yearbook, raffle ticket sales – events fly at us like confetti shot from a cannon with “The Final Year” emblazoned on the barrel. Perhaps inevitably, I’ve spent an awful lot of time over the past two months with this class, beginning with teaching a couple of fiction lessons, culminating most recently in a field trip and carpools to... Continue reading

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov What shall I show you? Shall I show you the woman, staring at a computer screen, embedded in a sea of interview notes? Shall I show you the blank face of the monitor, staring back at her? Shall I show you instead young faces, many dotted with the badges of adolescence, some tan, some freckled, chattering and grinning? Shall I show you the dynamics of character and plot, played out as the teens pass through their morning exercises in movement and... Continue reading

It feels like a travesty to write anything and a sacrilege not to. I have three healthy children, asleep (or mostly asleep) beneath mounds of covers and stuffed animals. In Newtown, Conn., there are 26 empty beds, with 20 sets of stuffed animals whose children will never cuddle them again. I know people who have lost children to disease, accident, and even violence. The same thought penetrates every time – those of us whose children live and laugh, or those of us who have never had children of our own, have no place from which to speak. Except, possibly from... Continue reading

“The Waiting Place… …for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or a No or waiting for their hair to grow.” –Dr Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go! My kids’ school curriculum has pauses built into the day; the teachers talk about the rhythm of in-breathing and out-breathing. The space between the notes makes the music. Negative space balances the picture. The... Continue reading