(I would like to preface this piece by acknowledging that there is a large amount of privilege in one knowing anything substantial about their ancestors or family tree past a few generations. This is something that mostly white Europeans have access to while other groups of Americans have considerably less. I cannot speak to the pain or difficulties of not being able to trace your family line very far, nor do I feel equipped to make helpful suggestions, except this one: your ancestors live in you. You are an embodiment of all they could have ever hoped for. …
I hadn’t run for several days, not since before Christmas. Christmas, unfortunately, despite my great love for it, is a tremendous trigger for my anxiety. Usually the week leading up the holiday is spent with an enormous knot in my stomach as I wait for all my well laid plans to fall apart. I think this is a left over from several unfortunate Christmases in a row where one member of our family fell ill right before or after, or during one particularly awful holiday, right on Christmas.
This year I also had a pandemic to contend with. Naturally I…
I remember my breath tasted funny…like potato chips. As I huffed around the perimeter of the middle school’s field hockey and football fields, I could detect the starchy flavor in the back of my throat and tried to imagine that I was settling down with a can of Pringles rather than attempting the mile run for my gym class. Despite my powerful imagination, no luck. I couldn’t take myself out of that plodding pace over the dirt. I was stuck in my body, one I didn’t particularly like, and one that I felt like, even then, at 12, couldn’t perform.
…
When a democrat and a republican are navigating marriage and election season in the era of Trump.
On our third date, circa 2006, I finally decided to ask Mike about the W ’04 bumper sticker on his car. I had assumed through the first two dates that it came with the car, that it wasn’t his and he hadn’t been bothered to take it off. I was 18 and deeply committed to my political beliefs, which were influenced heavily by Michael Moore and my dad, who’s own grandparents had been Bolshevik revolutionaries. …
I’m twenty weeks pregnant, half way through a very much longed for pregnancy. I have two other children, one who came when I was twenty, the other when I was twenty-five. Both were easy and uneventful, my youth and high level of ignorance shielding me from most pregnancy anxieties. This time, however, things are different. It took us a long time to get pregnant, and an early miscarriage preceded this little one’s conception. Things have felt tender and tenuous.
At my first prenatal appointment, it was suggested that I get the blood work done for a sequential screening, a test…
July 21st, 2007 was a beautiful day. I remember how the sun filtered in through the windows of my dad’s truck as he drove me from Farmington down to Harrison, the town where I grew up and my parents still lived. I stuck a hand outside and felt the warm air push it back.
It had been less than 24 hours since I had called my mom to tell her I was pregnant. Earlier in the week, before everything was different forever, I had planned to spend the weekend at my parents. Mike was working third shift all weekend, it…
“I can’t see the line. You’re crazy.”
“No, look, if you just tilt it this way in the light you can make it out.”
“Pregnancy tests don’t work like that. There’s either a line or there’s not. You’re not pregnant.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I am.”
My boyfriend, Mike, and I were huddled under the one good light in our apartment, passing the bit of plastic I had peed on back and forth. My period was just barely late and I had been experiencing almost nonstop headaches. …
“When someone is able to perform the art of touching on the archetypal, he can play on the souls of people like on the strings of a piano.” Carl Jung
I started reading tarot cards about a year ago. I had no real experience before my deck and a book Amazon had recommended arrived on my doorstep. The cards were slippery, like any new deck, and slightly taller than playing cards. I looked carefully at each of the 78 images, some with (what I thought to be) clear meanings, like The Devil, while others remained cloaked in mystery (I mean…
The day was absolutely gorgeous. My little boy had tucked his hand into mine and we walked down the causeway in a little lake town in Maine. I felt good. Whole. And we were about to go get some ice cream.
“Mama, look at all those people down there!”
I glanced down to where he was pointing and saw a group of 20-something women lounging on a little spit of sand beside the town boat launch. I wondered vaguely if there were some sort of model convention in town because each and every one seemed to be thin and long…
I am one of those people who is very good at looking like she has her shit together in a singular area of her life. For me, it’s work. I teach English to adults. I’m not, like, the next teacher of the year, but I’m solid, and more than that, I love it. I’m organized, knowledgeable in my content, and deeply invested in my students’ lives. I could tell you where each and every one of my students is academically, what they need to do next in order to graduate, and give you good odds on whether or not that…
Kirsten Pietraszka
Mom, wife, and teacher who would like to be awesome at all three of those things, but is really only good at, like, one and a half.
