The Meek Squawk of the Chicken Mother
Much has been written about The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the book by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua. If you are not a parent, or are not Asian, perhaps you have not heard of it, except possibly from your friends with kids. They probably either hate the book and wish ill to ...
The Big Move (B.M.)
My husband and I lived in the same townhouse for over a decade. The place suited us beautifully for about seven of those years and was too small for the last three, but we loved it. Last fall we moved into a new home, and though we are perpetually nesting (think Hobbits, but less hairy), ...
Swim (me) part deux
Last summer, I posted Swimmies, about my kids’ swimming despite the fact that I hate doing it myself. Nothing earth-shattering has changed between then and now. But on a recent trip with my family, I was trying to keep up the exercise routine (Run. Get sore/injured. Repeat.) when I discovered that I hate swimming slightly ...
The dreaded list
Lists of new year’s resolutions are the devil. The act of writing them down practically dooms the endeavor to failure. Keep it vague, and it’s just magical thinking, an amorphous wish to wake up with a new personality. Get too specific, and it becomes the incredibly detailed list of things you won’t do. At least ...
Wading
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to you. This season has plenty of conflicting religious and secular messages, so I thought it would be an appropriate time to post this piece. Published in 2005 in the journal Dovetail, it’s one aspect of how I handled religious ambiguity when my first child was learning ...
Of all the dim sum joints in all the world
This weekend we’re taking my mom out for dumplings at a wonderful Taiwanese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s quite a schlep out there from West Los Angeles, so we don’t go as often as we would like to. But it’s my mom’s birthday, and she loves Chinese food, so that’s our destination. My ...
Christmas carol
Warning: mournful post ahead. Tonight after dinner, my mom played some Christmas carols on the piano as my kids read the new books I bought them at their school book fair. My husband read too, flipping through the picture books when the kids were finished. It was pretty idyllic, just what you might hope for ...
Infectious grooves
One of the many soundtracks running through my head after I turn off the radio is an imaginary list of songs from films I’ve seen. There are a number of popular songs that have been used so perfectly, in my opinion, that I can never again hear the song without also thinking of the scene ...
Cockroaches, Truth Telling, and Spalding Gray
Recently I went to a reading of the diaries of Spalding Gray put on by Writers Bloc LA . I became a fan of Spalding Gray over 20 years ago, when I discovered his book Sex and Death to the Age 14. I recently re-read it, and missed his voice all over again. Here’s why ...
Blank Slate
I’ve been very sparse about writing anything lately, but I wanted to take a moment to pat myself on the back for (almost) settling in to my new home. My family and I moved in exactly a year ago, and we’ve been gradually feeling like it’s our home. If you’ve read earlier posts, you might ...
