It was the beginning of a semester. I was almost in my second year of teaching at the university and I remember telling my colleague that I was “really doing well.” I was finally able to prepare sufficiently for my classes, change up my reading lists and entertain creative projects. I had just sailed into new terrain with my daughter: preschool. This wasn’t like having the licensed-in-your-home kind of sitter that could be sick or sleeping on the couch when we walk in. Thankfully, that only happened once but it was enough to make me feel beyond guilty as I…
Author: Mom Egg Review
This morning I woke to the music of the clock radio as I did several years ago – B.C. (Before Children). I lay in bed with gray dawn light filtering in the windows to my left and my husband buried under covers to my right. Not even his nose poked out. Shadow, the dog, got up and ambled over to nuzzle my hand with her cold nose, hoping for breakfast. Even if the disc jockey is the only one up, Shadow’s ever optimistic. My husband leapt out of our waterbed, punched the snooze button and jumped back under the warmth…
The Mom Egg Reading at the First Annual New York Poetry Festival Governor’s Island Sunday July 31st, 4 PM Stage 2 – THE BRIGADIER Featuring Fay Chiang, Rosalie Calabrese, Tina DeVaron, Janlori Goldman, Kelli Stevens Kane, Caledonia Kearns, Heather Haldeman, Eleanor Gaffney, Elsa Mandelbaum, Puma Perl, Golda Solomon, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Catherine Woodard, and Marjorie Tesser Photos here: http://themomegg.tumblr.com/post/9078714337/the-mom-egg-reading-at-the-first-annual-new-york
Another morning, another diaper breach. Strip the baby, strip the sheets, toss the stuffed zebra, giraffe, and elephant into the laundry. And as an added bonus, get the big green stinky mess in her hair. Crap all over and all she does is clap her hands and squeal. “You like to lie in your own poop, don’t you?” I say to her, groggy from a too-short sleep. Before I know it I’ll have to be out the door, so I begin the mental checklist of the things I can control: get her cleaned up and dressed. Hold my tongue when…
The Mom Egg Uptown Tuesday, July 5th 6:30-8:30 Featuring Kelli Stevens Kane Donna Katzin Monica A. Hand Elsa Mandelbaum Theta Pavis Lynne Shapiro of The Mom Egg http://themomegg.com and members of Above the Bridge Writers Café Reading at Word Up a community bookshop in Northern Manhattan 4157 Broadway @ 175 Street www.wordupbooks.com Please join us!
For a better part of our children’s lives we are defined by them, or maybe, become defined by them. Then there comes that pivotal moment when we have done our job, hopefully with much success, and they go out into the world we’ve prepared them for. And with what seems to feel like a soul seeking slap of consciousness on our rosy, worn cheek, we are no longer defined by our children, which then begs the question, who am I? I think of the Dr. Seuss book, “Are you my mother?” while gazing in the mirror at the reflection staring…
My three year-old can wink. She has been able to do it for months now. Popeye gave her the idea, but her timing is all her own. I hear something shatter in the bathroom and round the corner in time to watch the last of my limited edition Channel polish run thick and black like blood across white tiles. She winks at me and I’m rendered speechless. I am the law but she makes me a partner in her crimes and, secretly, I’m grateful for the invitation. Upon the birth of her son, Laura Nyro, wrote “I don’t want to…
One night, I was reminiscing, which I tend to do a lot of on nights I can’t get to sleep. My thoughts transported me back to when I was a little girl of around seven. I had been visiting my grandmother and an older cousin of mine stopped by before going to the post office. This was one of my favorite cousins. He was over six feet tall, a semi-pro basketball player, and I begged my grandmother to let me go with him. He lifted me on his broad shoulders, and gave me a piggy back ride there. As we jaunted to the post office, my…
Dreams Against Absence I. First Night without my Son I gather the scent of my husband like a bed-sheet made of mice. Awake, the smell of our family scurries out from cracks in the walls. I cry this warmth made of little heart beats—same as I cried for the empty womb once our child was born. II. Second Night without my Son My dreams are a mouse giving birth to a dozen pups. Blind and hairless, the rodents move slowly towards the scent of moonlight. Their bodies are open targets for crows, until the skull of the slaughtered pig opens…
Kylemore Abbey, home of the Benedictine Order of Nuns is situated on the picturesque west coast of Ireland. The nuns who reside here take a vow of silence and live quiet, peaceful lives in an enormous castle. The pristine acres of land surrounding the monastery include a solemn, gothic church the size of a miniature cathedral, a clear, tranquil lake that photographs the castle in its reflection, and a beautiful, walled Victorian garden with maze-like walkways lined with butterfly-filled flowers. Except for the necessary hushed chanting and contemplative daily prayer, these women dedicate themselves to a lifetime of silence to…