confessions of a reformed tourist
It started when he was newborn. It’s funny, you know? Because you’re pregnant for nine months, waiting for the baby. Anticipating the baby. Imagining the baby. Et cetera. And then! Labor and delivery, which is basically like military basic training, except condensed and in your vagina. And then you bring home the baby! And what [...]
In May of 1999 I had gotten my BA from Cornell University. I had double-majored in History and French Lit and harbored vague dreams of graduate school, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, or even the next five years. And so, in a sequence of [...]
After she left I consciously thought to myself, OK, you can start grieving now. But I didn’t even know where to start, so I just drank myself as senseless as humanly possible. I craved oblivion. I suddenly realized I hated my job. I hated working in the Financial District. I hated living on the Upper [...]
This photo of my mother was taken in 1970. She was a year out of college and teaching biology at Cathedral High School in New York City. She was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. Living in Manhattan was an enormous challenge for her. That first winter, she tells me, she got herself a [...]
I was planning to explain this later, I was planning to write one last actually-in-Grenada post dedicated to the indelible images of the last few weeks, but enough people have asked the obvious question – WHY? – that I feel compelled to address WHY? before I leave, in spite of the fact that I have [...]
Emily came at night. She began with a timpani of thunder. At first, I survey from the corner of my verandah, until the blowing rain chases me indoors. I listen to her pummel my neighbor’s steel roof, as if taking a mallet to a steel drum, whaling on it like a wicked auntie with a [...]
(Click here to start at the beginning.) I am on my back, musing that it totally sucks to be a turtle. The doctor holds one leg and my mom holds the other. The doctor looks down and reports, huge smile on her face, “Your vagina is stretching quite nicely!” Um… Thank you? I almost laugh, [...]
(Click here to start at the beginning.) Thursday, May 18th, 2006. Four days before my due date but I planned to be two weeks overdue. I had lots of nesting scheduled. I was carrying small and feeling great. I had only stopped working ten days earlier, and only because of my swollen ankles. First thing, [...]
When I first arrived in Grenada in April of 2005 I was so malnourished, my skin would bruise under the barest touch. I was drowning in depression, hardly able to bear food in my mouth. Thankfully, I was coherent enough to want to get better. I knew that living under the tropical sun would just [...]
The best teachers in life are the ones who do not necessarily *tell* us everything they teach, but those who teach by example. The best teachers are those who let us make our own mistakes and learn from them. They are supportive, they are mentors, and perhaps the greatest strength of the best teachers is [...]
