At long last, here sits my piano, my mother’s before me, drying out in our Vermont living room. It smells about how you’d imagine any piece of wood furniture with metal and felt and other materials might after deteriorating in a damp basement garage for the past five winters, and summers, through as many or … Continue reading Homecoming Story: My Piano Is Back
Colleagues
Parenting Story: Difficult Children, Interesting People
I was chatting with a colleague last week about raising a boy with attention deficit disorder, and all the challenges that come in that package, and how it looks when the boy becomes an adult man and starts making his own decisions about important things in his life. Or at least how it looks in … Continue reading Parenting Story: Difficult Children, Interesting People
Dog Story: It Must Be the Biscuits
Whole wheat that gives shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. Heavens, they're tasty, and expeditious!—A Prairie Home Companion The shy Scout-the-Labish is coming into his own. Although lately I’ve been calling our tawny little guy of unknown parentage a Goldapeake Retriever, hijacking the clever adverts an Australian … Continue reading Dog Story: It Must Be the Biscuits
New Real Friends: A (Hopeful) Lamentation
Our parents serve as eternal reminders of every ‘cute’ thing we said and did in childhood, however stridently we might wish to forget: it’s a parenting privilege. I find myself doing it to my own twenty-something these days, even across the miles that separate us. I need my bref-kass, I mutter in the early morning … Continue reading New Real Friends: A (Hopeful) Lamentation
My Journey to the Corporate World: Don’t Hate
A ballet friend and colleague recently asked whether I’ve been “itching” to teach again. I had to think about that. These days I’m not sure I would describe my desire to teach as an itch, but maybe—it felt like something more profound when I took the colossal and risky leap of faith to open a … Continue reading My Journey to the Corporate World: Don’t Hate
Closing a Chapter
Yesterday Handsome Chef Boyfriend and I made our final run to Vermont's beautiful Upper Valley to collect the last of my things from the loft I called home for about a year and a half. It was a grind; there was still some heavy stuff he missed last week because he could not get to … Continue reading Closing a Chapter
Nourishment
Fall term has been up and running for two weeks now at ballet school; that means that I have been sneezed and coughed upon by little people (and a few medium ones, too) for about as long. In years gone by I have been good for a solid head cold once a year but lately find … Continue reading Nourishment
And Away We Go!
Fall term began at ballet school yesterday; the school director caught me in a moment during my Level 4A barre with a very pointy index finger. I was urging the kids to "send the foot across the room," speaking metaphorically of course. And no, we are not in prison, but in a smaller interior classroom … Continue reading And Away We Go!
Once More, with Wiggly Animals
Between episodes of attempting to catch a cheeky groundhog and putting in my first-ever vegetable garden, spring arrived here in Vermont in earnest. The lawn needs mowing and the house needs dusting. My Subi needs its snow tires off and oil changed. I need to wash the windows to welcome in the warm sunshine at … Continue reading Once More, with Wiggly Animals
Waning Summer in Lake Placid
In case you wondered dear blogosphere, I am still alive and well. This week I have a guest teaching engagement at Lake Placid School of Ballet, where there has been a cold drizzle and kids attending dance camp have come trickling into the studios covered in fleece. Strange mid-August phenomenon, especially for this Southern girl. … Continue reading Waning Summer in Lake Placid
