I prepared for this for weeks. I mean it. Weeks. Notes in my calendar. Detailed reading. Brainstorming. It was an online contest that gave you the chance to put your novel in front of thirteen agents at one time—and more importantly, this was not their fathoms-deep slush pile; this was a chance for them to…
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The View From A High Place
Every now and again on the journey of life, it’s like you come to a high place, and as you stand on the crest of that hill, the panorama of your life spreads before you in the low places, stretching 364 degrees. The only part you can’t see is the future, a narrow sliver of…
Read MoreCome Away With Me
For the first time in our five years as parents, we left the kids with my parents and took a weekend away. We flew to Tampa on Friday for a wedding, and after a bit of a rough start, we felt our way back into coupledom. Bonnie was passing by on its eastbound, spill-cleanup-disrupting run,…
Read MoreOf Husbands on Father’s Day
Father & Daughter Originally uploaded by Enigma Photos Okay, ladies, I’ll keep this short and sweet. How did you celebrate Mother’s Day, and what do you have planned for Father’s Day? There is a tremendous inequality in the way we approach these two holidays, and the guys get the short shrift.…
Read MoreA Change of Acoustics
[picapp align=”none” wrap=”false” link=”term=wedding+gown&iid=226380″ src=”0222/02586eb3-14ad-4891-80f2-a9195ef3a446.jpg?adImageId=13072607&imageId=226380″ width=”337″ height=”506″ /] The day was not off to a promising start. My three little angels had had me up eight times in seven hours. And instead of sleeping in, they woke up before I managed to accomplish anything in my early-morning work time. And they couldn’t pick a low-stress…
Read More50 (the magic number)
Part One: Fifty seconds. Ears popping, rising ninety-five floors above overtired children, train schedules, bad bus directions and the guy on the street corner screaming about the end of the world. And at the end of it, the doors opened on this: It was our tenth anniversary dinner, six months late, the first of…
Read MoreHigh Fidelity, Part 2
[picapp align=”none” wrap=”false” link=”term=wedding+rings&iid=183505″ src=”0179/44c285ca-a17a-4f7e-9e29-a24c45b752db.jpg?adImageId=11831217&imageId=183505″ width=”500″ height=”333″ /] Yesterday morning, I sat nursing Nicholas by the window as usual, when I heard the squawk down the hall. “Christian, Julianna’s awake,” I said. “Okay,” he answered. He finished shaving and went into her room as he does most mornings. And, like most mornings, their voices floated…
Read MoreHigh Fidelity
She wrote her story anonymously for O Magazine—the story of a couple trying to put their marriage back together after the worst kind of betrayal. Sandwiched among a series of pieces on alternative relationships, I nearly skipped over it, especially when it began by talking about the days when she was “the other woman” to…
Read MoreI Root for “Brangelina”
I’m rooting for Brangelina. It goes without saying that relationships in Hollywood generally don’t last. Famous people, for some reason, seem to be pathologically incapable of long-term commitment—with the odd exception, of course. I’m a super traditional kind of girl—the kind who got married for keeps, and who, by the grace of God, managed to…
Read MoreThe Sacred Cow
“Is it not possible for us to do with gender, sexuality, and reproduction what was long ago done with the stars? To realize that these are also secular areas…?” So says Anne Rice in the conclusion to her book, Called Out of Darkness, her memoir about her flight from and return to Catholicism. She’s talking…
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Kathleen M. Basi 