On a recent Saturday morning, I drove 70 miles solo to watch my daughter compete in a cross-country race. I didn’t turn to NPR or a podcast or one of my Audible books to pass the time. Instead, I listened to the same song on repeat for the entire trip. The tune is three minutes long. The ride took seventy-five. I’ll do the math and tell you that it equals...
When I was in ninth grade, I was teased by some boys that I couldn’t get pregnant because I didn’t have my period. Over a thicket of students, they launched the insult at me while I made my way down the hallway to my next class. It was the first time I’d been body shamed. The first time I used fuck off as a response. Which is worth noting, given...
It’s the new year, and I am reflecting. Looking back at 2018 and all the good stuff that happened. Usually, by the second week of January, I’m already entrenched in my list of resolutions. Giddy to have another go at the areas of my life that need improvement. Grateful for the forgiveness and chance at redemption that January 1 always brings. Of course, this mindset causes the majority of my...
My husband and I have been together for 24 years. Married for 17 of them. There have been incredible highs and spiraling lows. We’ve had two nickels to our name and stretches of great bounty. Some years go by when we hardly see each other. Which is when things usually come to a head and we start making announcements like, “I’m done!” or “Maybe we should just end it.” Of...
My sister and I were talking the other day. I was home sick with a cold; she had the week off work. Out of the blue, something urged her to check in on me at the exact same time I happened to be walking by my often misplaced phone. I picked up and what ensued was a rare and extravagant two-hour conversation. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I...
I had to give up coffee a couple of months ago when my heart started acting out after weeks of over-training, over-filling an already full plate, and regularly missing meals. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Six years ago my depleted adrenals and changing hormones urged my ticker to mount a similar intervention. Which it did, quite happily, in the form of tachycardia and a bulging artery that wouldn’t...
My son is fast. He talks a million miles an hour. Moves with bursts of energy. When he’s excited about something, his ideas spill out of him so quickly that I almost have to follow behind with a bucket just to catch a couple. As he’s matured and gotten to know himself better, he’s learned how to corral that energy when needed. At his school orientation the other day, where...
I was working at my computer Tuesday morning when a notification from a friend popped up with the headline that Kate Spade had died. I did a double-take and stopped everything to click on the link she sent. It was 9:41 in Los Angeles, 12:41 in New York. Spade had been found less than three hours prior. Her death an apparent suicide. It seems almost everyone has a Kate Spade...
I fell in love with Wendy Whalen at the end of her 30-year career as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. Even though I lived in Manhattan while she danced with the company, somehow I never knew of her celebrity. Instead, I discovered her by sheer luck, years and years later, while madly chasing down an orchestral piece by Max Richter called On The Nature of Daylight. If...
I caught myself singing in the shower the other day, which surprised me. Not the singing part (I enjoy ripping a tune), but what it means to sing in the shower. I write in the shower all the time, out loud, running dialogue back-and-forth. But singing, that’s different. I genuinely believe that people who sing in the shower are happy. In fact, when my husband and I hear our kids...
There’s so much noise around turning 50. Does one deny being a half-century old? Embrace the achievement? Fight like the devil to turn back the clock? Without question, this age instigates a new chapter with bigger stakes and a growing sense of urgency. Given our youth-obsessed culture and my own compulsion to stay young, I wondered how honestly I could write about this milestone. Fifty on Fifty is my experiment.
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