My mother loved fabric. Her basement held hundreds of bolts up to fifty yards each, which means she could have unfurled a textile train over fifteen miles long. Fabric sat in tall stacks on her sturdy sewing-room workbench. The bottom bolts were flush with the bench’s front, but the stacks gradually leaned back as they…
Over a decade ago, I began writing a book, though I didn't know it at first. When I transitioned from elementary school teacher to graduate student, I began writing short pieces that led me to wonder about my meager childhood memory, study the nature of memory, and try to find lost memory. Eventually, I wrote…
My former student M. interviewed me about becoming a teacher. She's in Manhattanville's awesome Atlas program, which helps students define their motivations and create a direct, personalized path from college to career. (The program offers so much more than choosing a major.) M. plans to be a teacher and, in the long run, a teacher…
My mother's chores always drew my sisters and me back to her house. Over a weekend a few years ago, while we proceeded through a lengthy list, I grew committed to one task: clean a corner of the basement floor. While at it, I sensed there was something bigger I was trying to scrub away,…
Though I grew up in a wooded part of Connecticut, I felt some nature shock when my husband and I bought a house here. Twenty-two years in apartments had offset the eighteen years I'd spent in my mother's home, which sat among the same tree types I'm looking at right now: hemlock, arborvitae, birch, oak,…
