By Barbara Matousek As we crossed the bridge in to town this morning the sun from the southwest had already risen and the sky was that crisp, mystical blue that always comes just before the coldest temperatures of our Minnesota winters. To the southeast a jet heading north left a long white trail behind it, […]
By Barbara Matousek I spent much of this past weekend in the black leather rocker that was my nearly constant companion before I had kids. I used to spend hours in that chair, rocking and reading, losing myself for days in a Toni Morrison novel or the latest issue of Best American Short […]
By Barbara Matousek The cold, fall rain comes down fast as we pull forward in the St. Mary’s parking lot, and Sam points to the small white statue on the west side of the building. “There’s Jesus’s mom,” he says. “Yep,” I say. “That’s Mary.” Anyone who knows me will tell you that I […]
By Barbara Matousek “I wish our family had two moms,” Sam says, and I am caught by surprise. I am loading the dishes into the dishwasher while Sam puts the head on his new Lego alien minifigure and Eva pulls at my pants leg begging for her bedtime cup of milk. “Why is that?” I […]
By Barbara Matousek The Mazda that I purchased three months ago is dead, stranded at an odd angle next to the stop sign on the county road that turns to The Berry Patch. I was revving up and passing a Honda, keeping my eye on the clock and thinking we were probably going to be […]
By Barbara Matousek “What sports did Grandpa Jim like?” my son asks. We are standing in the kitchen and he is pulling the scissors out from the drawer, cutting the plastic wrap off a frozen raspberry fruit bar. “He liked all sports,” I say. Sam hands me the wrapper and I place it in the […]
By: Barbara Matousek We are sitting on the wooden deck on the east side of the aquatic center watching our four-year-old boys float on their backs and “do big scoops” and play a game called Mr. Fox What Time Is It, when an older father leads his daughter past us and back towards Sam’s pre-school […]
By: Barbara Matousek I’m not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn’t actually thinking. Mostly now I think “midlife crisis.” Why else would a 45-year-old single mother of two children under five commit to something as time consuming and crazy as a Ragnar relay? For anyone who doesn’t know what these are, they are running […]
By: Barbara Matousek “Mom, what does C-H-I-N-A spell?” He asks from the backseat. This is his latest used-to-be-cute-but-is-now-really-annoying obsession. This morning as I was making pancakes and his baby sister screamed for bananas and milk and uppie-uppie-uppie, Sam read me the titles of all 50 of his Pokemon cards, frequently mixing up the T’s and […]
By: Barbara Matousek At Lions Park Eva’s toes push at the leather ends of her pink flower Robeez and she reaches for me. Again. Uppie, uppie, uppie. The sun cuts across the ball field at a sharp angle, and Sam squats to draw pictures in the sand near home plate while the rest of the […]
