CREATIVE PORTFOLIO
Here I share excerpts of some of my favorite work with a link to the full pieces. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them. A list of other publications follows as well.
THE FORTUNE OF ALL WOMANKIND
published in Dorothy Parker's Ashes
It is not quite dusk, not quite winter. The highway, sky, trees, even the occasional other car, all shades of gray. I am perhaps 25. Mother, perhaps 50. There is a quiet ease between us, the hum of the car the only sound. Then my mother runs her hands through her hair and says, “Did you know I was pregnant again after Sue?”
I re-grip the steering wheel and glance at her. She is staring straight ahead, out the window, decidedly not looking at me.
ISN'T FORTY KIND OF OLD FOR THAT?
published in Brain, Child
My mother’s visit is supposed to be low-key. This is the third time she’s traveled across the country to help us since we adopted Zachary, and it’s the first without a nerve-wracking event on the agenda: no trip to the hospital to get the baby, no visit with the birth parents, no visit to the lactation consultant to learn how to nurse an adopted baby.
OTHER WORK
P
"A Mother Talks to Her Sons About Brett Kavanaugh," The Daily Podcast, Dec 28, 2018.
Book Review of A Father’s First Year, by Elisha Cooper; recorded as a River & Sound Review Podcast, 2007.
“In the Land of Perfect Children,” Oregon Literary Review, 2006
“Resisting Rosa,” Camas, 2001.
“To Sit With the Men,” ByLine, vol #194 November 1996.
WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS
published in Literary Mama
When we finally achieved a sustained pregnancy, I put away the fertility books and pulled out the maternity books. But these “what to expect” books seemed to address a more chipper, fact-oriented type of woman, one concerned with concrete, physical phenomenon — issues of the body more than the psyche.
TRUMP'S SO-CALLED MASCULINITY
published in The New York Times
I am befuddled by the idea that Mr. Trump is a throwback to some swaggering tough-as-nails military commander. He’s more like an aging, shuffling Pillsbury Doughboy. Tough as nails? Fingernails, perhaps. I’d be shocked if he could run a mile. He prefers to watch TV and tweet. Vintage machismo required the manly man to actually be able to climb a cliff, dig a trench, catch a thief, rescue the girl or at least look sharp in a suit.