My Six-Word Memoir

Hey, I have a six-word memoir in Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure the new book from SMITH Magazine (yes, the same SMITH that publishes my husband Josh's A.D.)

Not Quite What I Was Planning originated from a contest SMITH held with Twitter last year, inspired by a possibly apocryphal tale of Ernest Hemingway's six-word short story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." The pieces ultimately chosen for the book are a good mix of the silly, absurd, straightforward, sentimental, and ironic (lots of those). Mine is "Suburban Girl Tries to Make Bad" (p.152). Okay, so I fictionalized the setting somewhat, but my purpose was noble: to reveal, as any good memoir does, the deeper emotional truth. (That's what they all say, no?) Josh is in there too: "When she proposed, I said yes." No fiction in that. Other contributors include Sebastian Junger, Aimee Mann, Dave Eggers, Douglas Rushkoff, Nick Flynn, Stephen Colbert, Jonathan Lethem, Amy Sedaris.

The book's been getting tons of press, including an excellent interview with co-editors Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser on NPR's "Talk of The Nation."

The New Yorker even wrote a Talk of the Town about it--composed all in six-word sentences.

Forgive my bias when I say the book isn't just a novelty piece. It feels trenchant. There is something haunting in the brevity of these mini-memoirs and in the inevitable self-interrogation they inspire--after reading it for awhile, you will start to naturally compose six-word sentences about yourself.

Oh, and go ahead and submit your pithy memoir to sixwordmemoir.com — a sequel is already in the works.

Our Saturday Nights with Carmela and Tony

Now that are home so often, we watch The Sopranos (better late than never, no?). At the center of it is the power stuggle between Carmela and Tony. The struggle has the name of marriage. An institution in crisis. Still, it does not interrogate the power of the mother. Here is Carmela, standing in the kitchen with her sponge, as if at the helm of a battleship, wiping the decks down, getting ready to hoist the flags. No, true, not a financial power, a kind of moral power. The power of disapproval.

back to the office

On the 4 train into Manhattan. Already, there are things I forget: the breast pads, bottlecaps for pumping bottles, the slim freezer packs that make the bottles fit. I tried to prepare Phoebe for me being gone all day. It has rarely, if ever, been so long. One or two times before, I guess. But that was an aberration. This is the new normal. How will I do without the naps I have become so accustomed to? Will I need to start drinking caffeine again? How will Phoebe adjust? How will Josh adjust? (He will now be with her in the mornings.) At 3 months, it seemed hard; at 5 months, now it seems possible. In Josh’s arms this morning, she looked down coyly and bounced her leg, gave me an uncertain smile.

I’ll call you, I said. I’ll call you.

The office. The cube. My company has been bought by another company. The Technical Help Desk has moved to Orlando. The guy I talk to reset my computer password has a lower voice than the guy I used to talk to in Austin. It is cold there—30 degrees. A cold front. I moved here, he says bitterly, for the weather . . .