sea salt

I never identified with kids who watched TV after school, or went to friends' houses during the week, or slept in until 11am on the weekends. The idea that kids my age had so much free time was mysterious and wonderful. What did it feel like to have all that free time? While I chose all of my school activities and am ever grateful for the experiences I was able to have as a kid and a teenager, there were times I wanted to know what it felt like to not have sports practice after school every day, often followed by another practice for another team. There were times I didn't want to wake up at 6am on a Saturday to play a weekend volleyball tournament. There were summers I wanted to sit around all day, instead of going to my job at a day camp and eventually two-a-day practices. In addition to sports, and homework, and AP classes, there was church, family, sisters' soccer games, college applications, and mandatory house cleaning. I had a very happy childhood - and a very bu...

I walked into our bedroom and the bags were packed. Suitcases bulging with t-shirts and socks covered the bed, and trash bags filled with old clothes lined the wall, waiting for their trip to Goodwill. I burst into tears. Heavy sobs and an intense panic took over my body: what will I do now? My husband is not leaving me. In fact, I knew that today, while I was at work, he was at home packing, preparing for our trip tomorrow from Nashville to Boston. His new job starts on Monday, and so he is going first, to settle back in, to find us an apartment, to prepare for my arrival a month later. We joked about how the time would fly, how we would Skype everyday as we did during our engagement, half of which we spent in different states. I know I will be fine, and I know this is the most practical way to move, and I know that in one month, when we are reunited, it will seem that no time has passed at all. But that didn't make the sight of packed suitcases any easier to bear. I t...

One of the most distinctive differences in the way my generation has grown up, compared to our parents and grandparents, is that we are both more exposed to and protected from the harsh realities of war. People lazily protest with bumper stickers and others use the military as a political platform. Media channels tell us what they think we need to know, and then we turn off the TV and go to bed. But when it comes to our day-to-day lives, most of us could easily forget that we've been at war for 10 years. Try comparing that experience to those who lived through WWI, WWII, and Vietnam. I can't. It's just a different era. The war hasn't changed my ability to buy food. I'm not limited to the amount of sugar I can use in a week. I don't have a victory garden. I'm not filling a job that a drafted man left vacant. I'm not responding to a poster of Uncle Sam telling me he wants ME, and I'm not part of a new music movement with a powerful anti-war messag...

This week I had the chance to work on something truly meaningful. One of my coworkers asked me to re-write the copy for a brochure, advertising an annual 5K run . The run is in honor of her brother, who died seven years ago at the age of fourteen, dropping from a sudden heart attack after cross country practice. This assignment comes just four months after the news of Alison , who also died far too young. I worked on the brochure, filled with pictures of a smiling kid always surrounded by friends and family. His life obviously meant a lot to those around him, and it was lost in an instant on an otherwise normal afternoon. The images and writing about my coworker's brother were touching, but sobering. Along with the work of coming up with a new name and new copy for the run was the work of not trying to think of my life without one of my sisters, and trying to think about if the way I've spent my 28 years so far would be considered meaningful if I died tomorrow. As I worked...

Yesterday I had lunch with my best friend in Nashville. We were at a tiny burger joint, and at 12:30pm on a Tuesday, it was filled with men. We managed to squeeze ourselves into a spot at the greasy counter, facing the grills and sharing elbow space with men all around. "I quit smoking," she said to me. I smiled, but didn't see the big deal, as she only smoked a few cigarettes a day to deal with the stress of her new business. "And I stopped eating white bread and sugar." "That's ... a lot to quit at once!" I said, wondering why she would bring up a new diet while we were eating burgers and fries. She smiled and looked directly at me.  "I'm having a baby." ______________ On Saturday my husband and I participated in A Novel Idea - Jumpstart , a one-day workshop for adults who want to write a novel. A staunch creative nonfiction writer, I was nervous, but ready for a new challenge: fiction. The untrue. The invented. The haven ...

(Aleksander Hemon. "The Aquarium: a child's isolating illness." The New Yorker , June 13, 2011.) After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan hit, I plunged into news overload. For days I read articles, watched videos and scanned pictures - the same ones over and over. The horror of it was not simply gripping ... it was paralyzing. I didn't know how to balance the seemingly trivial existence of my every day with the overwhelming tragedy of this disaster. The same thing happened when I recently lost an old friend. Thanks to the Internet, I could read and re-read blog entries about her progress, read and re-read her online obituary, read and re-read news articles from the DC area to report that "the pedestrian" had succumbed to her injuries. My access to and fascination with the nonstop images, reporting and details of tragedy worried me. My id told me to learn more, read more, see more (after all, I'm a curious person - if there's something to l...

This morning I started my day like any other. I woke up at 5:30, got dressed, went for a walk and called my sister. But instead of finishing off the routine with yoga before leaving for work, I called a 6th grade classroom in Florida for a Q&A session. My role in this session? The author. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Who is your favorite author? Are you going to write another book? * Six years ago I was in the Harvard COOP bookstore with my sister. I had just begun my MFA program, and was already dreaming about seeing my name on the cover of a book. We walked through the aisles and scanned the walls of must-reads before circling a round table with a sign that read "Summer Reading." It was the collection of books on required reading lists, the lists compiled by teachers, administrators, and school board members. These were the books that educators wanted their students to read, some because they are fixtures in the literary canon, and oth...

On May 22, I felt an overwhelming sense of pity. Sympathy, maybe. As everyone knows, a fringe sect (some might say cult) of Christians believed the world would end on May 21. And they didn't keep it to themselves. They created websites, wrote articles, made t-shirts and paraded through the streets of major cities in buses with fear-mongering verses about hell and damnation. They were passionate, excited and yes, over-the-top. But they really believed the world would end, and for them, assured they would go to heaven, it would be the best day of their lives, the last day they had to live on earth (which for many people, for many reasons, is indeed a happy thought). But May 21 came and went. The Internet quickly became clogged with jokes, pictures of "rapture pranks" and articles proclaiming the absurdity of how fervently these people believed in something that never happened at all. I admit, I laughed at a few, and we jokingly texted our pastor to see if he was still ar...

Those readers who know me in person know that I am, well, loud. My voice is loud, my laugh is loud, my gait is loud (it's inevitable when you walk as fast as a person who has lived in Boston). I like loud music, loud conversation, and loud white noise (which we use at night to hide the silence and its variety of soft, creepy noises). I know someone who finally got hearing aids after years of nodding along, asking people to repeat themselves, and not going to the movies because it was too hard to distinguish the voices. The doctor's tests revealed that he had 50% loss in both ears - he was only hearing half the world around him. With hearing aids, he was shocked to discover the sounds of things he had previously assumed to be silent. The ding of his car's turn signal. The click of his fingers on a keyboard. The wind. Most of these sounds are annoyances I've always tried to mask: the car radio covers the sound of the blinker, headphones at work make my keyboard sil...

  (in loving memory of Alison) Last week Kevin and I had dinner with some dear friends who have a 2-year old and a 3-month old. Their lives have changed dramatically since they had children, their world turned upside down. We had a pretty dramatic year ourselves. In the span of less than one year, we were engaged, married, transplanted to a new state, and homeowners. Each decision felt like the biggest of our lives. People do this every day , we kept reminding ourselves. But that didn't make it any easier. When we shared this with Brian and April, they laughed. "Wait till you have kids," they said. "To you, every moment is the biggest deal of your life. But everyone has kids. So you're saying, 'Guess what! My child is potty-trained!' but everyone has already gone through it. It feels like the whole world has changed, but it really only has to you." We laughed. We don't have kids, but we understood. Lots of people get married and buy hous...

At my college graduation in 2005, I was showered with cards and wishes of "Congratulations!" I smiled, thanked everyone, and scratched my head. Why was I being congratulated? I went to college, did my work, and finished in four years. To me, it didn't seem that remarkable. My aunt tried to explain that it was a big deal, that I should see it as an accomplishment. But I wasn't convinced. To me it felt like being congratulated for going to work every day. I signed up to do it, I did it, and now it was done. What was the big deal? The same thing happened when we got married. Everyone was happy, and came with more wishes of congratulations. Again, I didn't get it. I knew it was a happy occasion, but where was the achievement in saying "I do" and marrying someone I loved? I didn't feel like we'd necessarily accomplished anything--we'd just committed to share a life together, something we really wanted to do. It didn't seem like a great feat...

I did it. I self-published. And I'm thrilled. Some books are less commercial than others, which makes them poor choices for agents and publishing giants. But these books can be the most timely, and thus the ones that need to be shared by any means possible. I believe mine is one such book, so I have swallowed the prideful idea that my book wasn't good unless I had an agent and decided to just share it. Download it at here - it only costs $2.49, and 25% of all sales go directly to the Alzheimer's Association. Please consider clicking the "share" options to spread the word via Facebook and Twitter, and if you get the chance to read the book, please write a review on smashwords.com. Thanks for your continued support! 

In five months, we've made some good friends who have helped us out with everything from airport pick ups to recommending a good car mechanic.  We've appreciated these people all along the way, but didn't realize how much we needed them until this week - house week. It's been a little over 1 week since we moved into the new house, and in that week we added to this extremely important group of people...people to call in a crisis.* I. Moving In the city, moving is like going out to the movies - you know who to call, you know who will most likely be interested, and you know who has their own car.  Kevin and I each had our Boston regulars, people we always called to help us move apartments (usually in and out of 3rd floor walk-ups), for the small price of pizza after the move.  We had the friend with the truck, the friend who could lift a dresser by himself, the friend who was great at organizing boxes in the back of a car.  When we moved into our apartment in Nas...

Pellegrino was not my grandfather.  He was not even related to me.  He was an old man with broken English who smoked on the porch and wore a red knit cardigan from September - May.   Every morning I came down from my third floor apartment, left the house and said, "Buongiorno!" and he would check his watch and say, "You late!  You sleep all a-day!"  Every evening I'd come home and say, "Buona sera!" and he'd say, "You late!  You been sleeping all a-day!"  Some days I thought he might really be crazy; other days I thought he was just being silly; most days I thought he was a combination of both, so like my grandfather in the years before he died. Today I found out that Pellegrino died in January.  He was in his 80s, he had bladder cancer, and he had been living with his daughter since last year.  I moved out of the apartment in 2009, and missed him when I came down from my new third floor apartment every day to an empty porch, wishing ...

The new typewriter has sparked a new blog!  You can check it out at: http://smithcoronasisters.tumblr.com/ .  My co-author (and dear friend) Kristen and I decide on a writing prompt, respond independently on our Smith-Corona typewriters, then upload the images to the blog - you can see every typo, missing letter, and awkward spacing.  Ah, the world before computers...  Enjoy - comment - share!

On Sunday afternoon we bought this typewriter.  We had gone to browse our two favorite stores (8th Ave. Antiques and Pre-to-Post Modern Vintage) in search of used furniture and otherwise useful, cool things for our new house.  We've had great luck at both of these places, from which we've purchased a coffee table, end tables, nightstand, dressing mirror, desk, and artwork; our requirements are only that the item be useful, cheap, and better made than anything at Target.  On Sunday we considered this typewriter for a long time.  It's not particularly useful, as the store owner estimated it is probably from the 50's or early 60's (design on the typewriter, tweed case).  It wasn't particularly cheap (marked "Vintage Typewriter: $50").  And there's clearly no Target-brand typewriter to compare it to.  But it came home with us, and now sits on my desk where my laptop used to be.  We're by no means antiques collectors or experts (...

On Sunday our pastor read from 2 Samuel, in which Araunah says to God, "I would not make an offering that cost me nothing."  The story shed light on the true meaning of any kind of gift - someone gives up something for the sake of another.  This is why the idea of re-gifting has such shameful connotations in our society.  It's not that you didn't appreciate what was given to you, but that you've sacrificed nothing in order to give a gift.  It's easy, convenient, and superficial - if anyone can do it for free, it means very little. My husband loves Henry David Thoreau, and we have adopted one of his adages as a guiding principle: "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."  The most important and valuable choices can cost a great deal of life, and the trick is knowing which ones are worth it. A cost I willingly absorb is the cost of keeping in touch - really keeping in touch - with extended family and far-away friends.  I a...