As a mom, especially a homeschool mom, some days are good – you get everything on your list crossed off and you feel like THE GODDAM QUEEN OF THE WORLD. Other days your child says NO to everyfuckingthing and you push and push and push until any possibility of enjoyment – much less learning – […]
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“Mommy, I’m a big boy now. I can take a bath by myself,” my eight-year-old son says as he slingshots his Batman underwear into the hamper and dumps a bin of Lego into the tub. I wish I could say out loud — explain to him like I would to a reasonable adult — why this is […]
Read Moreis when you knock on the door of the unmarked office building across the street from your very first apartment, because it has no sign and you’re bored and a little lonely since you don’t know anyone in town besides the crewcut who smells like feet in the next apartment, who won’t stop knocking even though you’ve arranged […]
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First you will have to get married to someone who, when he asks you on bended knee in a 250 square foot apartment in Manhattan surrounded by the sounds of honking horns and a toilet that won’t stop running, you pause. You pause. Even though he stares at you, leans toward you, clutching the receipt […]
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I am lying on the floor of my basement in the winter of 1989. It is dark but for the remains of a smoldering log in the fireplace. Cool air seeps through the foundation and between the spaces of the delicate afghan that covers me. My parents aren’t home. It’s only me and Tom, sleeping […]
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I am standing in the grocery store on an ordinary Tuesday in October, list in one hand, phone in the other. Like most people, I do not enjoy grocery shopping, especially since my son is usually with me jumping up and down, begging for every single shrink wrapped toy dangling within his reach. But, today, […]
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It’s mid-July and the thermostat in my teaching trailer reads 85 degrees. Everything I am wearing—skirt, summer camp t-shirt, faded red espadrilles hiding unpainted toenails—is sticking to me and I haven’t even started teaching yet. I need to make a playlist. One that says, “I’m the cool new music teacher.” I lean over to open iTunes […]
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March 23, 1995 New York City 2:25 p.m. At first I tried to push the thick, wooden door of the doctor’s office the way you push any door to exit a building, but it wouldn’t budge, so I turned and gave it a shove with my back and shoulder. It was then that I locked […]
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Do you know what it feels like to fit in? It’s been on my mind a lot lately, especially as I’m about to start my second year of homeschooling my eight-year-old son. While the concept of ditching mainstream education has grown exponentially in the last ten years, being a homeschool parent still makes me seem a […]
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A few nights ago, I had just turned off the light at the end of a long day and was looking forward to a good night’s sleep when my phone buzzed to let me know I had a Facebook notification. “Suzanne Frey Hawthorne has tagged you in a post.” Why is she tagging me at […]
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Pryvate Parts 