Childhood & Family Life

The colander was yellow, the plastic kind with the small feet on the bottom, and my grandmother kept it under the sink beside a paper bag she’d saved from the grocery store. On certain afternoons she would pull both things out and set them on the kitchen table without saying much — just a brief … Read more

She is standing in the middle of the living room holding a wooden spoon, and she has been standing there for almost three minutes. I know because I have been watching the clock on the microwave from the kitchen doorway, which is perhaps not a thing I should admit, but there it is. The spoon … Read more

The peas went first. Not thrown exactly — more released, deliberately, over the edge of the tray with a kind of scientific detachment, one at a time, each one landing with a small tick on the kitchen tile. Maren watched each one fall. Then she looked at me. Then she looked at the place on … Read more

She stopped for the first time about four feet from our front door. Not because anything had happened — no sound, no movement — but because there was a crack in the concrete, and the crack was interesting, and that was that. It was a Tuesday morning in late September, the air still warm but … Read more