I didn’t know how unprepared for motherhood I was. The nine months spent waiting for my first baby were so magical that it never occurred to me that the business of raising children would be so uprooting.
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Happy Public Domain Day, 2025
Happy New Year's Day, readers — and Happy Public Domain Day. Every January 1st, we get to celebrate not only the greatest day of college football but also the greatest day for release from copyright of great works of literature, music, art, and other previously copyrighted material — at least in the United States.
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Carrying Grief
Even if it is helpful to know that deep grief is quieting, it is consoling that some are closer to our particular pain. Most people immediately become awkward when I mention the miscarriage. It makes sense to me, as I act similarly around people who have more extensive familiarity with death than I do. I have never experienced the death of a child I have given birth to, have never yet experienced the death of a parent or a spouse. I am not old; I still cannot, as my professor told me in college, really understand Lear. But at twenty-five, watching Lear carry the body of Cordelia and cry, “Why…
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Travel That Shatters Our Images: Revisiting Brideshead
The way out of a tiresome tour bus and onto the pilgrim road is an odd, unpredictable combination of grace and a mind willing to leave preconceived frames at home.
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A Streak of Sadness
“I believe the right books find us at the right time,” a former professor of mine likes to say. It’s true. The right books find us at the right time and they speak to us in the right ways. Some books sit with us for years, bringing wisdom in each new season until they become old friends. Some books wait on our shelves until we finally notice them, which always turns out to be when we need them most. Other books strike like lightning.
