Category: Essays
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Ease On Down the Road
The sun is out, the air is clear, and the windows of my six-speed Mini are down as I snake around the turns of the winding road by the Ohio River. On the third day of my recent visit home to Louisville, I took a drive, about an hour long, out to Middletown and down…
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Home is Where the Throw Pillows Are
I woke up excited one morning this week. The sky was blue, the leaves were wilting into gold, and for the first time this year, the air had that crisp bite that signaled the beginning of my favorite season. I love fall. I love the changing leaves and cozy afternoons in coffee shops, the sweaters…
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An Open Letter to the Late Great Nora Ephron
Dear Ms. Ephron, You should be ashamed of yourself. Taking two impressionable young girls, stuffing their heads with lies and montages and Godfather quotes. You ruined us, spoiled for life, lost with no grip on reality. We’re ready to go to the mattresses! Actually, let’s back up. This letter comes to you in three parts.…
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On Air Conditioning
Brooklyn, July 2013, 3 a.m.: I’m lying on the floor of my bedroom in nothing but my underwear and a sports bra holding a fan aloft over my face in an attempt to find some form of relief from the heat. I’m no stranger to heat: I grew up in heat worse than this, at…
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Where is Le Métro? (On Moving to New York)
In many ways, I still consider myself a newbie to New York. I had visited the city several times before moving here, sepia-toned weekends full of Central Park rowboats and rooftop prosecco, Broadway shows and hotel room parties and long afternoons at the Strand. So I had a vague sense of what I thought life…
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Like a Hurricane (On Moving to New York)
Anyone who didn’t grow up in New York City has a vision of what they imagine living here is like. New York is probably the most ubiquitous setting for television or movies, inundating decades worth of pop culture and giving us sparkling fantasies of what it’s like to inhabit this fair city. My childhood was…
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Kentucky Seven (My Southern Heritage)
Memphis, TN. 1998. Mom and I have just come back from a trip to Costco and are unloading the back of her fire engine red Suburban or, as my daddy calls it, the tank. Arms full of paper towels and blueberries, she asks me to grab some forgotten item. Laundry detergent, I think. I’m already…
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The Real McCoy (My Southern Heritage)
In my family, I’m the city girl, the one who grew up surrounded by concrete and art and good shopping malls (You’d be surprised how much the caliber of your shopping malls increases when you move to the state’s metropolises, and how much this matters as an adolescent girl). I had cousins in small towns…
Zelda & Scout 