My children changed so fast I could hear time whistle as it flew past me, and I was desperate to remember the small details. In the process of writing them down, I realized that other, subconscious instincts had propelled me to the page: in the act of recording small memories, I unearthed the meaning of these small fragments of my life. My writing actually excavated, polished, enhanced my understanding of my life
Read More...

List three memories you and your family made last week, and then, five details about each that you don't want to forget.
Read More...

In the grayest month of the year, lake-fog
curdled between whitepine stands, grouse burrowed
in lacy snow-caves, I let the bird from
its cage, unshackled the houseplants, undressed

the Christmas tree. ...
Read More...

"Dump," Z. says as he pours
water out of the bucket at the children's museum
or out of the bowl in the bath
or when he sees a dump truck on the highway
or tips his plastic farm train. ...
Read More...

My son at three crouches
on the ground, his face leaned in
close, inspecting a line of ants.
A stick clutched in his hand,
he pokes at the line, shaping it...
Read More...

I'll still dance,
the way we would have in pyjamas
late on a sticky summer morning
with no music playing. ...
Read More...

Our bloodlines winding back, then lost.
We harbor bad genes from great-great-greats,
our son unlucky except he's doing well.
We listen to the quality of his cough. ...
Read More...

This joyful moving-beyond-flags state is one we aim for in our family too, though we carry our multiple backgrounds with us. My husband's and my contrasting national heritages, in particular, require attention and adjustments: I ask him to eat oatmeal or breakfast cereal rather than rice on weekend mornings, American-style. He asks me to avoid writing people's names in red ink and whistling after dark, respecting two Japanese etiquette norms. More labor-intensive and sensitive is our ongoing negotiation of how to treat each other as husband and wife, having grown up in two very different paradigms for gender and marriage.
Read More...

In previous centuries, life moved at a walking pace. Social roles were assigned by birth or by ritual ties to earth and tribe. Today, social roles include many choices, and seemingly few constraints. Today, our lives move faster than the speed of a car, and driving is only one of many dangers a child will face. So, while Will learns to drive, I am learning to release him into the world, a difficult place where he will need to create his own niche.
Read More...

And instantly I want to speak to your mother. To tell her how peaceful you look, and how your face seems dream-like and content, as though you'd known you'd done the right thing. Just as suddenly I want to grab you and shake you and scream at you for what you'd just done to her.
Read More...

When Nina Sankovitch lost her older sister Anne-Marie to cancer, her life went into a tailspin. Three years later, Sankovitch's grief and pain were as acute as ever. That's when she turned to books. She committed to reading a book a day for a year, hoping to find the solace and answers she was looking for through the written word. Sankovitch recounts her experience in the recently published Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. Literary Mama Profiles Editor Lisa Moskowitz Sadikman interviewed Sankovitch about how she managed to read a book a day, how reading informed her motherhood and the connective power of books.
Read More...

Every day for one year, Nina Sankovitch read an entire book and posted a review on her website -- all while raising four boys. As a mother of just two children, a mother who struggled to find time to read this one book, I was curious to know how Sankovitch did it. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading tells her story.
Read More...