About Me

I keep rewriting this “about” page, and never seem to get it right. It’s called “About Me”, and that’s the problem. I don’t want to write about me. I don’t want to list whether I like cilantro (I do, but apparently this is due to my ability to actually smell it, whereas people who don’t like it don’t like it because they can’t smell it. It’s true. I heard it on NPR). I don’t want to talk about myself.

Part of the reason I hesitated to start a blog is because I am a private person by nature, and I am uncomfortable having an entire site where I talk about myself. I keep coming back to this medium, this blog, because it is a place to document the small moments of my life, to keep a record, to tell my stories. I do share tidbits about my kids and my life, but my purpose is to notice, to pay attention, to remember their stories.

Do we really need to know everything about an author? Shouldn’t there be some mystery, some blankness, so that what stands out is their stories, their words, and not what kind of beer they like? (Corona Light, cold in a bottle, no lime).

On the other hand, it’s part of this world, isn’t it? Blogging is not simply being a writer, there is a persona and a character that is being created, possibly followed.

So I’ll meet you halfway.

Long story short: For the past ten years, I was a writer trapped in a lawyer’s six minute life. I recently “retired” my legal career. I am a soul at home and adrift- I love my husband and kids and home with a fierceness that surprises me, and I would never change a single thing about any of it. I am also a thinker and a questioner, always restless and searching for what brings me happiness, joy, and what I am Meant To Do With My Life. I think I equally entertain and infuriate my husband on a daily basis.

My son is the light of my life, my daughter is the bubble in my champagne, and my husband is the captain of my soul and of all things really, as he is that annoyingly perfect guy who always has a right answer and always knows what to do. If the world ends, I am lucky to have him as he knows how to read a compass and start a fire. He will be lucky to have me because I am fun and interesting and will ask him lots of questions about why the world is ending and what it means and if it was a sign that I never got my law school diploma framed.

I live for the first moments of our day- my son’s delighted and cheery good morning call and my daughter’s warm and grumpy morning hug that lasts fifteen minutes.  I am equally enamored of the minute after they go to bed at night, at which point I immediately head for our jasmine-ceilinged pergola for a much needed beer or glass of wine, depending on how hot it is outside. Other things that make life worth living: good Mexican food, champagne, reruns of Friends, phone calls with my best friends that are scattered across the globe, Baskin and Robbins peanut butter and chocolate ice cream, puppy breath, the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle in early spring, chicken pot pies and red wine in winter, Flannery O’Connor, Mary Oliver, and Margaret Atwood when I’m feeling smart, JK Rowling, Tana French, Louise Penny, and Stephen King when I just want to be swept away by a good story, beach vacations, early evening walks with my dog, the smell of napalm in the morning (just wanted to see if you’re paying attention), Audrey Hepburn movies, pizza, old friends, meeting a new friend and clicking immediately when your words tumble over each other, Charles Osgood and CBS Sunday Morning, reading an actual book in a bubble bath with a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup, the changing color of the sky, the delighted look on my daughter’s face when we find the moon, and any ocean, anywhere, at any time.

I blog about what is haunting me or making me smile. I blog about those things that move me or infuriate me, about the things I most need to understand. I blog about life. As Sublime said, Life is short, so love the one you got.