Sitting in a bar in Washington D.C., a hard cider in my hand, I find myself venturing into the whimsical place I go sometimes when my attempts at understanding science bump up against the love, joy, and hope I feel in thinking about my daughter. I’m here in DC for the American Epilepsy Society conference, … Read More
I had a conversation with my daughter the other night, as we do sometimes. These aren’t the conversation I imagined having with my six-year-old. Instead they are led by my best guesses at conversation topics and two battered cards reading “Yes” and “No.” Sometimes she is just humoring me and sometimes she is unavailable for … Read More
Since having my daughter Esmé six and a half years ago, I have been somewhat obsessed by the mechanisms of motion. From her first moments her body struggled to move in the ways so many of us take for granted, that I would watch, awed, at the dance we orchestrate just moving across the room—muscles … Read More
I don’t want to write about health care, yet, somehow, I have to…because I am the mother of a child who is medically-fragile. I am the mother of a child who relies on Medicaid and protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And right now? Right now I cannot afford not to write about it. This … Read More
Her cool hand against my forehead I sleep well for the first time in days. All of the certainty of my womanhood slips away from me, and I am, again, her small child…my head in the safety of her lap. My body singing, “Mother. Mother. Mother.” *** When my own daughter was growing inside of … Read More
My great-grandmother, Bernice, was born in the Midwest just as the American frontier was disappearing. She liked to tell all kinds of stories—some of them her own, some of them passed to her by her mother. And while I have forgotten many of the details, what I do remember is the sense that it was … Read More
When we finally get parked outside the tiny old theatre before Choo Choo Soul I start feeling anxious. I had called ahead to see what the accessibility might look like. No one answered. I left a message. No one called back. So I am rolling Esmé into a situation without a plan beyond: “Hopefully Esmé … Read More
Some days I live on the border between my daughter and myself—reaching across, hoping to grab ahold of her, to understand. Some days I am certain I will never understand. *** I stood at the places that remain of the wall in Berlin. It was only in standing there that I understood that what we … Read More
I am on fire. I leap forward immediately, pulling my pants off in one fast gesture, screaming, “No, no, no.” I yell out other words I cannot remember beyond the taste of them in my mouth, the feeling of them spewing out without my permission, without any conscious thought. I look toward Esmé, who remains … Read More
“Hillee, I need you to get Phil. I need help.” There is an odd tone to my mother’s voice as it comes over the phone. I only later realize, as I am dialing my stepfather, that it is actual fear. I hadn’t asked her many questions because she said she had to go. The judge … Read More