Come closer, dear child. You have the most intoxicating aroma about you. It smells like new school supplies. That pack on your back has the pungent, stiff fragrance of new plastic -- the kind you find on character book bags, in pencil boxes, and wafting around action figures patiently waiting for you to come home and play. Those pencils smell like soft wood shavings, faintly cedar, and cool stony graphite. Your rectangular pink eraser, bright as bubble gum, has the essence of rubber and vinyl and the hope of getting it right on the third try. And this package of construction paper has a bouquet like cardboard, but far sweeter and softer. It brings to mind the creamy, faintly chemical smell of Elmer's glue. I bet you have some of that in there, too, just waiting to be globbed onto thirsty paper. You're going to take those redolent school supplies with you into a classroom, child, where you'll be greeted by more odors whose memory will stay with you well past your...

I hadn't been feeling like myself, or whatever fragments of my self are left at the end of each day. Where my sense of humor used to be there was a flatness; where formerly was a desire to get lost in a 30-minute TV program now was me mentally cataloging the things I would pack when I finally said screw it, I'm out ; where I used to have a creative drive was now me driving in the car aimlessly just to be alone for a few more blessed minutes. For more than three years, my life had revolved around the needs of one or two tiny, helpless, unpredictable humans. For the previous few weeks, I'd been suffering the slings and arrows of parenting a petulant 3-year-old and a teething infant at the same time. In any 60 minutes, I hated 59 of them (with the other minute being me sneaking off to pee alone). At any given time I was THISCLOSE to losing my shit, walking out the door, and strongly considering never coming back. This was more than just needing a break. It was me starti...

In the summer of my seventh year, my family landed in Southeast Texas. We had driven there in a distressingly orange Volvo station wagon with sticky vinyl seats and a "way-back." Inexplicably, my mom called her Betsy For a few years thereafter, each month during summer vacation my brother, my mom, and I would climb into the family car and head to town to go grocery shopping. (At the time, "town" consisted of three stop lights, three fast-food joints (the McDonald's didn't come until 8th grade), and one set of railroad tracks that separated us from the grocery store). It was 98 degrees in the shade and the car's air conditioning hadn't worked since the turn of the decade. Three miles with the windows down can seem like three lifetimes when you're not even 10 years old.

It's June. Look out -- summer is coming. Ah, yes, summer in Ohio...those approximately 12 days in late July, when the temperatures creep up to a balmy 84 degrees and Lake Erie averages about 72 degrees. If you go, don't forget to bring a wet suit for wading -- the water's about 6-10 degrees colder than Livestrong.com recommends for vigorous exercise . Even triathlon competitors wear wetsuits in water colder than 78 degrees. There is no way this Gulf of Mexico girl is taking a relaxing dip in that. Instead I will chill on our newly outfitted back deck, which now features a large cantilever umbrella to shield my fish-belly white skin from the sun and a 36-inch ottoman on which to prop my feet. My happy place All that I'm missing is a fruity adult beverage. Unfortunately, my knowledge of alcohol ends at how much rum to put in a Captain and Coke. So when I need an easy fruity drink recipe, I yell one of my favorite battle cries: To Pinterest! I type in the wor...

It was an ugly break-up. I was a sophomore in college; plenty old enough to get my heart broken, but not old enough to know what to do about it. The guy I had been dating for a few months cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend back home during Thanksgiving break. I didn't learn of it until Christmas break, when she -- who I did not know and had never wanted to meet -- showed up at my roommate's parent's house while I was visiting and confessed their offense with more than a little pride. We split, then drifted back together as the young and inexperienced often do. By Easter, we were sitting on the back steps of my dorm and he was telling me that I had too many personal problems and was dragging him down. I must have cried rivers, though I don't really remember. So it goes with young love. On a dead-end road across the street from my dorm was the city animal shelter. I began volunteering there on long Friday afternoons when I had nothing better to fill the time. So i...

you will never be this small again. tomorrow you will have grown a millimeter and mastered another new skill; you will fit a little less snugly into my arms. so tonight I will hold you as long as I can to memorize your weight and the rhythm of your breaths the smell of your hair, the softness of your skin before life gives you any calluses. I will hold you here and rock in this chair long past the point where my arms grow tired because this is why I wanted you this is what I came here for -- to hold you while you sleep and dream and heal my heart with love 10-20-13 (All poetry contained herein is the sole property and copyright of the author, and may not be reproduced without permission.) 

Dear Me, It is May 1998. Right now you are merely 17 but you've survived enough hardship to make you a bona fide adult, if that's how we're counting. Keep going. It will get worse before it gets better, but I promise it will get better. Some day you will soar. In the meantime, I hope you'll suffer me to give you a few bits of advice. It's about your mother. A twisty subject, I know, especially as you are on the cusp of breaking free of this town and the crushing weight of your childhood. But please listen and take these things to heart. I'm going to save you a lot of regret. Record her voice. It doesn't matter what she says -- hello or I'm going outside for a smoke or the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog . (Remember when she taught you how to peck that phrase on her massive manual typewriter? The keys struck so hard, punctuation scarred the backs of her pages.) Make sure, though, that she says your name. Years from now you'll unde...