Editor’s note: I wrote but never published this in late January 2021, just a few weeks after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and about two years into going low contact with my parents and no contact with my sister. It has taken three years, but I finally feel ready to share it. — Lindsey On Jan. 6, I was in a video conference call for work when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol.…
I have had a flicker of a hankering to write lately, and I keep coming back to this space (which I have kept locked up off an on for the past few months) and wondering what we are going to do with this blog, which is nearly 20 years old. TWENTY YEARS OLD. I’m sitting in a Mt. Juliet coffee shop right now writing a post for a blog that is older than the person…
“You have a lot of scars.” My son is standing next to me as I’m sitting on a truck-stop toilet, my pants bunched around my knees. He’s looking at my thigh. It’s extra pale in the fluorescent light. He is six years old and does not know what cellulite is, what ingrown hairs are — only that his mother’s legs are dimpled and marked in ways that his own skin, smooth and caramel colored, is…
This morning we learned that Richard’s father is in the hospital and has been for several days. His stepmother went to the ER today, too, and is being admitted, as soon as a bed comes open. They both have the flu, and his father has pneumonia and sepsis and a UTI on top of that. He was in the ICU for a couple of days before being moved to a regular room yesterday. Richard and…
About a month ago we took off to Panama City Beach for a week. I’d been wanting to make a beach trip with Holden for a few years now, and it finally seemed like the time to do it. My little waterbirth baby hasn’t spent much time near the ocean or any body of water, for that matter. As a baby and toddler, his dad wasn’t too keen on taking him to public pools. He…
My grandmother died Oct. 10. She’d spent the last few arduous months in and out of the hospital and back to the nursing home, then back to the hospital, battling rounds of infections and pain that kept her from resting peacefully enough to heal. She had fallen and hurt her shoulder and spine a couple of months ago and it just snowballed from there. She’d been in declining health for a couple of years, her…
My sister once convinced me to eat a crabapple from this tree in my grandmother’s yard. She told me it would taste good and I believed everything my big sister said. It did not taste good. It was remarkably terrible, actually. That’s not the bad memory I’m referring to, though. That’s one of many stories of her pranking me throughout my youth. The crabapple, the red onion she told me was red cabbage, the hot…
Tonight I was leaving work and taking the stairs because the elevator is out, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the stairwell window. And I was sort of taken aback by the sight of myself — my hair is long, suddenly; I’m in long sleeves, suddenly; I wear glasses, suddenly, except I have for so very long now and have yet to get used to the idea — and the sight made me happy…
These boys have a big time when they get together. And when they get together and stand next to each other, my mom says the phrase “been farming long?” about a dozen times. Here’s why.
Our sweet man, How do we catch up? You are two and a half years old now. You’ve dug in to the Terrible Twos lately in that you Just Cannot Handle It if your will is defied sometimes. You get really, really upset if we try to make you use the potty and you’re not in the mood or if we try to make you come inside or get in the car if you’re not…
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