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Parenting
The End Of The Day
A west-facing window and Scotch, the Sacred Order of the Kitchen, photos of the summer solstice
December 1995On Becoming A Postfertility Woman
From the moment menstruation begins and the first drop of fertile blood appears, girls are trained to fear unwanted pregnancies. I remember well my initiation into the disquieting ways of my body: as my mother and I walked down the wet slate path toward the car, she turned to me, paused momentarily, and said, “We’ll help you out if you get into trouble.” (Trouble. A code word for pregnancy, dead ends, the facts of life not yet discussed.)
August 1995Eight Days In Brooklyn
“ ‘Black rage’ — it’s a new defense for the Long Island Killer, sort of like an insanity plea,” my dad says as he drives us toward Brooklyn from La Guardia Airport. I have just arrived with my daughter, Rose, from northern Idaho for our annual week-long visit and I’m anxious for news.
July 1995Daughters Lost
It is difficult to convey the horror of losing your children like this. I found it hard to sleep, to concentrate. Every night I had beautiful dreams in which my children were young and loving, and every morning I woke up to a reality more like a nightmare.
June 1995Standing Tall
A first-time voter, a calm mother, a girl who wouldn’t be bullied
June 1995Hats And Veils
Vadim felt the wind-borne particles of water bursting in the hazy sunlight. He breathed the firs’ musty aroma and remembered Bosnia’s mountain pines above his red-tiled house, and the day Serb soldiers had firebombed the forest and his house had burned in high-explosive flames.
May 1995Day Of Rest
This July Sunday is hotter than any I have ever felt in Wyoming. It has been dry for weeks. The sun hangs limply in the sky, but for all its limpness, it blazes. The clouds are thin and high. The temperature is over a hundred.
March 1995My New Neighbors
A new couple has moved into the apartment next door to mine in this ancient Victorian. They are using the same bed as the previous couple, Nicole and Peter, whose dramatic lovemaking I would hear quite clearly as their headboard pounded my living-room wall.
February 1995Fathering The Night
Carrying the baby horizontally across my chest like a football usually calms him, and often puts him to sleep. But not tonight. He’s still crying, cycling through his whole repertoire: the screechy fear cry; the lower, throaty demand cry; the pitiable gasping interspersed with slobbery whimpers.
February 1995
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