
Nostalgia Content
We can be forgiven, perhaps, for imagining the past as it is recorded to be both graspable and comprehensive.
We can be forgiven, perhaps, for imagining the past as it is recorded to be both graspable and comprehensive.
We need one another in order to be brave.
I am grateful to be a daughter of Neland Avenue Christian Reformed Church because it matters still, to see so many people who care about the things that so deeply trouble me in the world and in the church.
The older I get, the more I watch women around me trying desperately to get pregnant, after being told for years that “it only takes one time,” that it would ruin you.
I thought, as I often do these days, about how deeply weird the whole thing is.
We drove past house after house set high on pillars to protect from future hurricane storm surges.
You’ll see where this is going. The whole plants-as-metaphor thing is tired, I know, but it’s potent.
Perhaps I and myself might solve this problem together in a more productive way if we collaborate.
Does it do anything but make me small and sad?
I like imagining an entire life from a list of names, suggesting weeks and weeks of research team meetings and emails and happy hours.
We begin the same way.
Everything I tried on made me look like either a couch or a backup dancer.
I am managing internal and external chaos by running until I’m really, really tired.
It must explain everything or it explains nothing.
Was she ever deterred?
I dislike going down hills (it’s too fast) and up them (it’s too hard), and also, biking makes my butt hurt.
I wish I could care less—it feels like a luxury.
You are not helping by pretending you can do it if you can’t, Katie.
“That’s who you’ve always been. You were always into that stuff.”
If you’re really interested in other people having babies, you could channel your energies into advocating for affordable childcare.
I don’t have Christmas cheer to offer.
Like everything magical, though, the airship project was riddled with realities.
But writing about my anger also moved me to remember that there are no clean lines to be drawn here between villains and heroes.
Does it matter that this particular person voting for a corrupt, anti-democratic, avowedly racist and misogynist leader is also a “prayer warrior” and a “champion of the faith”?
On good days, I think about John and that chalkboard and the dog under the lectern and I remember the joy of learning new things and the inexhaustible opportunities the world presents for just that.
The very hard thing I am learning right now—about race, and about myself—is that the rules I have been living by are not very good ones.
This is not an anti-racist reading list, per se.
Moral courage and curiosity means listening to yourself: where did this idea come from? Why am I moved to defend it?
But I will say that—for me—being confined to my home has sometimes felt liberating in a small and quiet way.
It’s tempting, as the writer, to make a trite connection here to challenges I have previously risen to (a potentially boring speech about crossword puzzles).