a radio was on.

Julie Yip-Williams died last week.  When I heard the news, I had a panic attack at the elementary school.  I was outside the gymnasium where the twins were taking their first kids' dance class, and I could peek in through square glass pane in the heavy, gray school door and see them spinning wildly to the music.  The class has children from ages 5 through 11 and the twins were crazy dancers, in love with each other, each brother holding the hand of the other, laughing and twirling.  They were hardly paying attention to the young teenager who was attempting to teach her unruly bunch the steps to the latest dance songs.  When they came out to the water fountain for a drink, they were flushed and enthralled with themselves.  They didn't know I was already there--I came early, unsure they would make it through dance class because Asher had announced he was definitely opposed that morning as he got on the bus, and I feared he would be out in the hallway, weeping and wondering where

Julie Yip-Williams died last week.  When I heard the news, I had a panic attack at the elementary school.  I was outside the gymnasium where the twins were taking their first kids' dance class, and I could peek in through square glass pane in the heavy, gray school door and see them spinning wildly to the music.  The class has children from ages 5 through 11 and the twins were crazy dancers, in love with each other, each brother holding the hand of the other, laughing and twirling.  They were hardly paying attention to the young teenager who was attempting to teach her unruly bunch the steps to the latest dance songs.  When they came out to the water fountain for a drink, they were flushed and enthralled with themselves.  They didn't know I was already there--I came early, unsure they would make it through dance class because Asher had announced he was definitely opposed that morning as he got on the bus, and I feared he would be out in the hallway, weeping and wondering where

Snow days.  Fond readers, I know some of you hail from as far away as Spain and Indiana (equally exotic to my east coast readers), but here in the Boston and environs, we are just trying to close the book on winter and mother nature--we should pause on that phrase and we will, I promise--keeps prying the pages back open, so that suddenly we are back in January and February, befuddled, looking up and saying wait, I already read this part. At the end of last week, we had a resounding thump of heavy snow and serious winds, and we woke up on Thursday morning to a snow day from school and no power, which, as the hours crept by, became the sort of pickle which needs getting out from under, or through.  As the afternoon darkened, we decided to decamp first to my sister's house in North Andover (her house being situated on a mysterious patch of land with its own sturdy power grid; we drove through eerie dark streets, through intersections where New Englanders were uncomfortably forced to r

Snow days.  Fond readers, I know some of you hail from as far away as Spain and Indiana (equally exotic to my east coast readers), but here in the Boston and environs, we are just trying to close the book on winter and mother nature--we should pause on that phrase and we will, I promise--keeps prying the pages back open, so that suddenly we are back in January and February, befuddled, looking up and saying wait, I already read this part. At the end of last week, we had a resounding thump of heavy snow and serious winds, and we woke up on Thursday morning to a snow day from school and no power, which, as the hours crept by, became the sort of pickle which needs getting out from under, or through.  As the afternoon darkened, we decided to decamp first to my sister's house in North Andover (her house being situated on a mysterious patch of land with its own sturdy power grid; we drove through eerie dark streets, through intersections where New Englanders were uncomfortably forced to

Joan Didion once told an interviewer that she didn't think it was possible to have children without having a sense that you've failed them. "You are always failing them, and they are always your hostages."  It's a stark, arch observation.  I don't know what it would be to lose my daughter before I die--Didion's daughter was just 39 when she died--but one of the central paradoxes of parenting, for me, has been wanting both to protect my children from terrible things and to nurture them into worldly people, critical thinkers who learn to navigate pain and loss and pleasure and purpose. I remember when Cameron was a baby, holding his small, warm perfect body next to mine and almost weeping at the unbearable thought that he would someday grow up and be out of my eyesight and be exquisitely vulnerable. But I digress.  When Didion says our children are our hostages, she means something different than the outside world pitching in, as it does, to insult and injur

Joan Didion once told an interviewer that she didn't think it was possible to have children without having a sense that you've failed them. "You are always failing them, and they are always your hostages."  It's a stark, arch observation.  I don't know what it would be to lose my daughter before I die--Didion's daughter was just 39 when she died--but one of the central paradoxes of parenting, for me, has been wanting both to protect my children from terrible things and to nurture them into worldly people, critical thinkers who learn to navigate pain and loss and pleasure and purpose. I remember when Cameron was a baby, holding his small, warm perfect body next to mine and almost weeping at the unbearable thought that he would someday grow up and be out of my eyesight and be exquisitely vulnerable. But I digress.  When Didion says our children are our hostages, she means something different than the outside world pitching in, as it does, to insult and inju