How impossibly dark it gets here in the afternoons sometimes. I lay in the bath with the pork roast brining and thought about the father-daughter Valentine’s dance at the community center, the one coming up that Charlotte seems so excited… Read More ›
parenting
Whether we feel it or not, the earth moves beneath us
It was the first night this year that didn’t fall so hard. If it had been a theater production and a light cue, they changed the fadeout from 30 seconds to 60. Though unseen, hope stirred underground and you could… Read More ›
Snow-covered mineshaft grate
I took the 900 around the back side of Cougar Mountain, but it doesn’t get much direct light this time of year and the road was icy in early morning, with snow on the trees still—and when Ginger and I… Read More ›
Wet metal drum
The sound of the rain came back last night, choking the corner gutter. The feeling when life pulls away in some irreversible moment, a large ship moving out from the dock and everyone running down to the end of it… Read More ›
Don’t blame Belfast, ’16
It was in Belfast this time of year we learned Charlotte can sleepwalk. It’s not like a special power sleepwalking, more a defect. The house was really small with steep stairs and I had the coal stove going all night… Read More ›
Whatever happens between now and December, keep it between us
This time of year 2012 I kind of snapped. Dawn asked what’s wrong and I started crying, said I needed to write. We went to Germany for Christmas and I had this transcendental sense reopening thing when I heard a… Read More ›
A matter of degrees
Lily’s crying upstairs now but it’s not the cries of a child, it’s the depths of horror, of hormones. She doesn’t seem interested (in an emotional way) in the bedtime ritual, it’s more transactional now—like anything, it doesn’t happen overnight,… Read More ›
The darkening afternoon sky
The sound of my kids upstairs in the morning singing, getting ready for school, the same nonsensical sound as birds in spring, makes you wonder why they really sing, if it’s to sooth themselves. I get to fix them toast… Read More ›
The moon got dropped like a wish in the well
By the time we got to Saturday I’d run out of things to complain about. Leonard Cohen was dead and Donald Trump President Elect—and it looked like rain the rest of the week, but that’s what you expect from November. Anthony… Read More ›
New luck toy
When Dawn used to go out of town the kids would get into bed with me and we’d watch Shaun the Sheep, about as much maternal comfort as I could offer, a warm body and a laptop. Dawn left for… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 