Author, Journalist, Pop Folklorist
A week ago my daughter Amalia turned one. One of the things that freaked me out about kids before I had one of my own was the way they serve as a physical manifestation of the passage of time. There are entire eras of my life where a year or two could pass without anything…
Read more about Act Like a Baby: Life Lessons from a One-Year-Old
When I blogged about why I cringe while listening to marrying couples read vows they’ve written themselves, I got called “cynical”, “bitter”, and (my personal favorite) “a little black cloud.” (I just love that expression; it’s really the perfect mix of adorable and evil. Kind of like me.) Now I’d like to cement my reputation…
Over the course of her 11 months of life, my daughter has become the proud of owner of not one but two little teddy bears that say “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep”, one dressed in blue pyjamas which recites it in English, and the other in pink jammy jams, speaking Spanish. I had…
Five minutes before we took over the microphone from the DJ at my daughter’s baptismal reception, we notified her godfather that we expected him to say a few words. He had flown in from Nicaragua, where my husband’s family lives, for the occasion, and in all the preparation we had somehow forgotten to warn him…
“Life is a circle,” my cousin said. Or maybe it was “life is a cycle”—you could translate the Greek word either way. We were talking about my daughter’s baptism, which took place on Sunday in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I grew up. My cousin came from the island of Corfu, Greece, to act as Amalía’s godmother,…
Read more about The Circle Dance: The Sacred and the Mundane
In honor of the Fourth of July I’m reposting a post that appeared on the Martha Stewart Living blog; it mentions a few of my favorite rituals. Thanks to my friend and editor Robin Sayers for posting! My dear friend Eleni N. Gage’s just wrote her first novel, “Other Waters” ($26; St. Martin’s Press). Much…
