Life is this changing thing that can’t be grasped too hard. I fall down, not like a leave. I fall down like a weight. There’s one loud thump and I’m back in the past like a good memoir writer returning to the page every day. People make fun of trigger warnings or maybe they think […]
Author: Nancy Schatz Alton
A Full Day’s Work by 9am
Yesterday I wrote a Facebook post about how parenting is hard, and I asked people to compliment a parent even if the only compliment you could come up with was about their shoes. Because who doesn’t love shoes? I made sure to note that I was not having a hard time parenting at that exact […]
The Not-Striving Place
Lately I yearn to be done with striving. Wouldn’t it be nice not to strive, I think. Just who am I striving for? Often I find myself striving for my family. And this is good except when it isn’t. Except that they all can strive for themselves. When my tween is sick and her teacher […]
She’s Turning 14
You know what? When your daughter’s almost 14, there no holy crap she’s a teenager. There’s more, oy vey with a swear word in between she’s almost ready to leave. Except she’s not. She’s still her baby self when she’s sick, especially on the weekends when she’d like to be hanging out with her best […]
Break into Blossom
Do you ever think about the fact that the older we become, the more like a collage we are? And have you weaved that in with the idea that spinning toward the positive with every word you speak can really unravel a bad day? Yes, I’m in poetry speak mode today. But I just read […]
The Eternal Motherhood Cunundrum
I watch Jada Pinkett Smith get fierce on camera about what it means to be a mother in this world. How we put ourselves last. About how we are expected to put our children first, our husbands second, and ourselves last. I watch her daughter listen contentedly. I think about how her daughter has been […]
Macalester Blues
I saw a man at the grocery store with a Macalester baseball hat on. Brand new. Brilliant royal blue with the college name in orange. The grey-haired man wore glasses. I gasped as I saw the hat, so relieved to see one of my people in the upscale-grocery store. “You’re wearing a Macalester hat?” I […]
Oh, Peter
“Sometime you hate everything.” That’s what my friend wrote to me ten days before he died. I didn’t want to look back on our email interaction when I heard the news of his death. Because reading his typed words the first time was bad enough. I hadn’t seen Peter since I was in my early […]
Nothing to Say
The wooden gate marks a beat with no beat. The wind is winning my attention. The rain is pulsing out a rhythm. It’s Tuesday and although the world outside my window is all wetness, I just saw a bee (or what looked like a bee) fly by. The rain moves at a slant, right to […]
My Bleeding Heart, Examined
So often I don’t know how to start writing. Especially on happy mornings like the one I’m living right now. The girls don’t have school and I laughed when Chris tried to wake us all up. I loved his befuddlement, the way he called out, “Are you up yet?” Even though we’ve been talking about […]