by paige on August 1, 2010
A FEW YEARS back, my family made its own venture into the wilderness, moving from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the expansive green hills of the Hudson Valley. It’s paradise, yet the climate where we live can be wretched and unforgiving, the land hilly and full of stones. We marvel aloud at the tenacity and sheer strength of this area’s early settlers, the people who cleared all the trees, built the stone walls that still stand. We are awed by what they accomplished, and quite certain we, with our reliance on power tools, the internet, and central heating, would not have a prayer of replicating their achievements. [click to continue…]
by paige on October 22, 2009
MY SON’S DAYS of believing in the unbelievable are growing shorter; I’m pretty sure this is the last year when he’ll accept Santa Claus on faith, though he’s a good sport, and he’ll probably play along for the sake of his sister. But I’m feeling pretty wistful about the end of his belief in magic, so when I discovered two giant pumpkins growing on a vine snaking out of a compost heap I keep ignoring down behind our barn, I decided to try to give him one last gasp of wonder. [click to continue…]
by paige on October 5, 2009
IT IS NOT NEWS to anyone (except maybe a checked-out dad or two) that we moms have a lot of balls: the ones we’re juggling, the ones we’re dodging, the ones flying directly at our heads. (And then there are the big brass ones we bring out when someone raises our maternal hackles, but that’s a story for another post.) When you have that many balls, it’s inevitable that some will drop, and you just pray (or I do anyway) that the ones that go bouncing away will be the ones that matter the least. [click to continue…]
by paige on July 14, 2009
REMEMBER MY SUMMER GOALS? Now that summer is more than one-third past (read that bit again, why don’t you, as you weep into your iced coffee) and I’m about to embark on our few short days of family vacation, I thought I should check in with, um, myself, and err, you all, and ‘fess up to what I’ve done, or not, on that list of mine. [click to continue…]
WHEN THE RIVER was a tiny guy, strangers used to stop us to exclaim about his resemblance to legendary child star and friend-of-Michael-Jackson Macaulay Culkin. If that’s not enough to send a stage-leery mama scurrying from Los Angeles to the hills of rural New York, I don’t know what is. There were other reasons for, and consequences from, our crazy escape from Hollywood to the farm, and this month, they’re chronicled in a story I wrote for Country Living. As a result, I seem to have opened a Pandora’s box of ambition and desire for my photogenic, performance-oriented offspring. [click to continue…]
A FEW YEARS back, my family made its own venture into the wilderness, moving from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the expansive green hills of the Hudson Valley. It’s paradise, yet the climate where we live can be wretched and unforgiving, the land hilly and full of stones. We marvel aloud at the tenacity and sheer strength of this area’s early settlers, the people who cleared all the trees, built the stone walls that still stand. We are awed by what they accomplished, and quite certain we, with our reliance on power tools, the internet, and central heating, would not have a prayer of replicating their achievements. [click to continue…]
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