The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays

Here, in my late thirties, I want to learn his nature-slowness. This, for me, is a change. It is the opposite of the kinds of drama that used to make me feel reassuringly alive. But I think I’m finally getting it. This kind of living isn’t the absence of story or of life. It’s just a story happening so slowly you can’t really see it taking place. I

But now, years later, I’m still here, doing the bee skits. It’s Funnyman’s longest-recurring gag. And I find myself wondering: But will I ever celebrate my sixtieth wedding anniversary like my grandparents? Will I ever be young and beautiful and pregnant by the sea? I will not, I will not, I will not. Many futures are possible but these particular

That we were good together, but not good enough. Which is a specific kind of tragedy.

a house where you have cried over multiple heartbreaks is infinitely better than a house where you’ve only cried over one, defining, bad thing.

What if boundaries and borders are actually the only way people can love each other equally and freely? What if, without those boundaries, love becomes an act of humanitarian aid?

I think my mouth said “myth” when it couldn’t say “dream” because to describe our collective American story to students as an available goal and not a particular generation’s narrative-shape-of-choice makes me feel like I am back in the sixth grade, Dorothy on the outside but Judy on the inside. Like I am smelling a rat, and the rat is me.

But it was undercover-earnest, too. It was sweet and it was dumb and I could not have loved that blanket more.

the neckerchief compounded how stupid and lacking in dignity you felt and you vowed to never again wear any article of clothing that you could not survive the mortification of being dumped in. This has proved to be a good rule.

The sun ducks beneath the tide line in one last orange snap and we clap for it. For the fucking sun. We are those people. And who isn’t, really. We’ve got one more lap in, after all. We should be so lucky.