It’s a pretty remarkable Halloween – two feet of snow are piled up outside the window, and the pumpkins are buried under white stuff. I’m sure that, all over the Northeast, moms and kids are rethinking Halloween costumes, trying to figure out how to bundle princesses into parkas, whether a Zombie in a snowsuit still has a fear factor, how to convince a six-year-old that even ghosts wear boots. Such parenting challenges are behind me, though I well remember the joy of a balmy Halloween night and, on a frosty one, the delicate negotiations required to keep everyone both reasonably…
My son Jack and I spent most of last Sunday in the kitchen together. Although he has a desk upstairs in his bedroom, and I have one in my office, the kitchen is the place in this house where most of the creative work gets done, whether it’s putting together a pot of soup, writing a blog post, reading manuscripts, or composing a college application essay. Jack sat on the sofa, tackling one short essay after another on the Common App and various college supplements, while I perched at the table, reading on-line submissions for a panel I’m on next…
There is always something else that needs doing. But there are never enough days like yesterday, days when the trees don brilliant robes and stand tall, rustling softly in their finery. When the sky melts into azure infinity, when the air is as soft as breath, and nasturtiums bloom like crown jewels scattered upon a tumbled carpet of fallen leaves. The thrum of insects, the call of a crow, the precious light, the honeyed warmth – it was too lovely an October afternoon to miss. A day that whispered, “Ignore the to-do list, shut off the computer, and play hooky.”…
I’ve already received exactly what I asked for for my birthday tomorrow. I gave my sons Henry and Jack plenty of advance warning and then I was quite clear about my wishes: Handwritten letters, please. Not e-mails. Not hastily signed store-bought cards. Not presents. Just letters, from each of them to me. Somewhat to my surprise, they both came through as requested — early, in fact. There are two sealed, handwritten envelopes sitting on the kitchen table at our house, and I can’t wait to open them. But there are many other gifts, invisible ones, that I find myself thinking…
