They build each other up, mindful that the world will try to tear them down
The show doesn’t start for another hour, but the line to get into the 9:30 Club already stretches around the corner. It’s cold, and my 14-year-old daughter is restless, her blood pumping with the nervous excitement that accompanies a first-time experience. We thread our way along the sidewalk, following the line of fired-up ticket holders around the corner, down the block, past the alley, almost to the next corner.
We are here to see Billie Eilish, the 16-year-old American singer-songwriter who got her start as an internet sensation. I have been to countless shows at this club over the past…
Playing a sport isn’t the only way for kids to exercise.
Some kids take off running with their first steps. They’re climbing things and riding things and bouncing around, making the most of every opportunity to move their bodies. Parents of those kids typically worry about broken bones and scraped knees. And those naturally active kids often go on to sign up for organized sports, which have their own built-in exercise regimens. Practice three times a week plus a game on the weekends, sometimes multiplied by multiple sports. Parents find themselves more worried about rotator cuff injuries and getting enough electrolytes than “is my kid getting enough exercise?”
But not every…
For ballet, it may be too late. For writing, it never is.
I was 13 when I got my first rejection from The New Yorker.
Most bookish adults have a story about getting in trouble for reading as child — in class, or at a party. I don’t recall that happening to me, maybe because I was a child of bookish people. What I got in trouble for was writing. Constantly.
I scribbled obsessively, in a Harriet the Spy kind of way, observing everything going on around me, recording every detail and then bending those details into fiction.
It unnerved people.
I was an ambitious kid, precocious. And I knew I was…
Wireless wasn’t the improvement I hoped.
I should begin with a caveat that the AirPods I currently own are not the latest and greatest version. It is quite possible that if I had the AirPods Pro or, well, anything besides the first generation model that I have, I might feel differently. But I don’t think so. The bottom line is, AirPods kind of suck.
Don’t get me wrong; it is awfully convenient to be able to connect to my phone (or my computer! or my iPad!) via Bluetooth. It is nice to go for a walk and not have to worry about a cord getting caught…
A love letter to my morning routine.
Every morning, the first task I give my struggling-from-sleep brain is to solve a Sudoku. My body may have stumbled through some simple things like waking the children, mumbling good morning to my husband, and pouring coffee. But my brain isn’t capable yet of truly reading the news or replying to an email. I settle at the kitchen table with my sharpened pencil, adjust my reading glasses, and gaze at a grid of numbers and spaces.
I have been solving Sudoku puzzles daily for years now, though when I tried to teach my son how to do it, I found…
Knowing better can’t silence my inner body-shaming critic.
I am ashamed to admit the deep and abiding prejudice that dwells in my soul. I feel tainted by it, this voice of doom inside my head, constantly delivering unasked-for judgement. It is a burden I lug with me everywhere I go, the effort of dragging it along unwelcome and unnecessary. But it’s not some demon I can see and battle. The call is coming from inside the house. The monster is me. A steady stream of criticism floods my brain: you will never be thin enough, you will never be pretty enough, you will always be lacking.
I pretend…
Dress the part.
As children, we know this intuitively. We know that a cape or our mother’s high heels or a rainbow clown wig has the power to transform us. What we wear is how we signal to others who we are. See? See my red cape? I’m a superhero, I can do anything!
When we grow older, our costumes change. In adolescence, we learn to use our clothing choices to communicate our moods and our interests; a beacon to help us find like-minded others. …
If forced proximity has you drained, you’re not alone
On a typical weekday morning a year ago, my husband would wake before dawn to try to get ahead of the morning commute, my son would sneak in a few minutes of Minecraft before hastily getting ready for school, and my daughter would be finishing homework at the breakfast table while lobbying for a ride to avoid the dreaded school bus. …
We are, quite literally, begging you.
How will your child commemorate this truly one-of-a-kind school year?
This is going to be one for the history books, that’s for sure. Think of all the unique experiences your student has had! The hilarious Zoom-bombings, the breakout room cyberbullying, the science teacher who never did learn how to mute his mic! Surely you want to make sure your child has a permanent reminder of the zany misadventures of virtual learning in the 2020–2021 school year.
How better to preserve those precious memories than a high-quality printed and bound book full of pictures of a building your child never once…
As if 16-year-old me would have listened to advice.
1. Process matters more than results. You’ll learn more in the classes you struggle with than in the ones that come easily. Lean into the struggle; that’s where growth happens. Don’t be afraid to be bad at stuff.
2. Stop trying to get to the next thing and enjoy the moment you’re in. There are going to be times in your life where you feel like you’re stuck in a holding pattern. You may be, literally or metaphorically, waiting in an interminable line at the DMV or stuck on the runway waiting to take off. But if you’re always focused…
Laura Todd Carns
Freelancer & fictioneer. Contributor to Medium pubs Human Parts, GEN, Curious; bylines elsewhere in WaPo, Quartz, EL, The Lily & more. www.lauratoddcarns.com
