Stories


A Twin Mom’s Post-Infertility Survivor Guilt

Published on Huffington Post, January 2014

huff poIt still startles me that people make babies with sex. Privately. Easily. Fast. Then there’s a birth, and no one looks back. For me, like many women, conception was an agonized, un-caffeinated blur of escalating medical procedures…
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How to Gain 70 Pounds for a Twin Pregnancy

Published on babycenter.com, December 2013

baby-center-tree-backgroundOn the brink of turning forty, I fell suddenly pregnant with twins—where “suddenly” is redefined as three years of infertility and one round of IVF. My doctor instructed me to eat 100 grams of protein a day, since twins often come early, underweight, and NICU-bound…
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It Takes a Village to Please my Mother

Published in The Sun – September, 2011

sun_magazine_coverNo one measured the temperature in Vientiane, Laos. Everybody already knew it was hot. The afternoon I left to meet my mother at the airport, it was hot enough that the engine of the tuk-tuk I’d hailed — a boxy cab of wood and metal welded to a motorbike — heaved clouds of gray smoke and…
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A Little Lint and Suddenly You’re Bridezilla

Published in The New York Times – April, 2011

MODERNLOVE-articleInline-v2As the daughter of divorced parents, I wasn’t sentimental about weddings or marriage. I had no visions of myself wearing a white dress. My thoughts on the subject instead tended toward pre-nups, counseling and custody.

Yet when I fell in love and decided to marry at 35, rather than elope I allowed my fiancé, Ken, to talk me into a small ceremony in our hometown…
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Where Water Comes From

Published in The Sun – November, 2008

TheSunMagazine_395_cover_260Once my mother began to date, I measured time by the era of a particular man. The coming and going of a boyfriend shifted the mood of our house more than any season of nature or any passage from one grade to the next.

When my mother’s first suitor knocked…
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My Evil is Lucky

Published in The Alaska Quarterly Review – Fall and Winter 2008

AQR_25_3-4Cover_1The world is an easier place with fewer words. I concluded this in the months before I moved to Laos, in 1998, as I studied the Lao language from a taped-together textbook with tiny type on the cover that read, “CIA Handbook.” Its pages listed paired opposites like good/bad, happy/sad, easy/hard, and also phrases I wouldn’t need in order to teach English, like, “I am running out the door! The police are here!”…
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By the Sides of the Deep Rivers

Published in Going Alone: Women’s Adventures in the Wild, Anthology by Seal Press, May 2004

Going Alone - Women's Adventures in the WildI planned to walk solo to the Gokyo Lakes to see Mount Everest. After reading The Snow Leopard, I would get out of bed, leave Kathmandu, and climb about 13,000 feet. I imagined the trip would take four weeks. Meanwhile I was appreciating Nepal from between the sheets…
read more »


It Takes a Village to Please my Mother

Published in The Sun Magazine – September, 2011

sun_magazine_coverNo one measured the temperature in Vientiane, Laos. Everybody already knew it was hot. The afternoon I left to meet my mother at the airport, it was hot enough that the engine of the tuk-tuk I’d hailed — a boxy cab of wood and metal welded to a motorbike — heaved clouds of gray smoke…
read more »


Where Water Comes From

Published in The Sun Magazine – November, 2008

TheSunMagazine_395_cover_260Once my mother began to date, I measured time by the era of a particular man. The coming and going of a boyfriend shifted the mood of our house more than any season of nature or any passage from one grade to the next.

When my mother’s first suitor knocked, I answered the door….
read more »


My Evil is Lucky

Published in The Alaska Quarterly Review – Fall and Winter 2008

AQR_25_3-4Cover_1The world is an easier place with fewer words. I concluded this in the months before I moved to Laos, in 1998, as I studied the Lao language from a taped-together textbook with tiny type on the cover that read, “CIA Handbook.” Its pages listed paired opposites like good/bad, happy/sad, easy/hard, and also phrases I wouldn’t need in order to teach English, like, “I am running out the door! The police are here!” or “Have you delivered the package?” To define myself in basic terms was a relief…
read more »


By the Sides of the Deep Rivers

Published in Going Alone: Women’s Adventures in the Wild, Anthology by Seal Press, May 2004

Going Alone - Women's Adventures in the WildI planned to walk solo to the Gokyo Lakes to see Mount Everest. After reading The Snow Leopard, I would get out of bed, leave Kathmandu, and climb about 13,000 feet. I imagined the trip would take four weeks. Meanwhile I was appreciating Nepal from between the sheets. A fan whirred overhead…
read more »