There is a photo of me and my brother in a photo album that is tucked into one of my mother's overstuffed closets. It is yellowed with age by now, tinted like an instagram. I am probably four or five; my brother a year younger. In the picture, we are both sporting identical rice bowl bangs, and I am wearing a handmade powder blue polyester coat with shiny white buttons. My white tights are slightly too big and rumpled around my ankles. My brother -- without a shred of self-consciousness -- ... Read more
Running through Rice Fields
Every so often, I would get on an exercise kick while living in Japan. I would don my roomiest t-shirt, snap on my headphones, lug my enormous Sony Walkman and head out the door. The year was 1996. I would run along rice paddies, spotting a heron or two as the sun started to descend. With Natalie Merchant blaring from my headphones, I would start vigorously enough, only to peter out about half a mile into the run. It was peaceful among those rice fields. Crickets and frogs would snicker ... Read more
A birthday, chalkboard wall & conversations with K
Happy Birthday M! It's a big one (forty!), but he wants an understated celebration with minimal hullabaloo so we'll keep it simple: a little sushi dinner, some cake, a date night. A few weeks ago, I made one of our kitchen walls into a chalkboard and we have been loving it. I use it to write to-do lists, M scrawled his life goals, and K doodles away. At first, M called it the "wall of death" and it's true - the shiny blackness seemed to darken the already tiny kitchen and was rather ... Read more