Jennifer Schmitt's Blog
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Nov.02.2010
She sits across the table from me, her head bent low, an arm shielding her paper. The top of her marker twirls and swoops like a figure skater carving a pattern in the ice. It’s all I can see for her effort. What she draws is a secret, and I’m bound by solemn vow not to peek.
She sets down her...
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Aug.04.2009
Earlier today, you would have found me cross-legged on Elle’s bedroom floor, folding the top flaps of a box together with one hand, holding packing tape in the other. Sealing away for a few weeks some of the odds and ends that string together the life of an eight year old girl.
As I ran the tape...
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May.31.2009
Just now, I was taping up a box of books and spotted my copy of A River Runs Through It. It’s one of my favorite books, and I read it for the first time (the whole thing in one sitting, on a wicker sofa on a screened-in porch on Nantucket) in September 1992. The movie came out the following month....
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May.22.2009
They pile into the car, arms full of backpacks and folders and reports cards. The word goodbye fresh on their lips.
As I navigate the school parking lot, I adjust my rearview mirror so that it fills with their two faces. Today would be a tough day, I knew that much. The last day of school, their...
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May.19.2009
I was in the middle of nowhere, but I felt as though I had arrived at someplace important and pivotal. A place that should show on some map of my life with the words Go here.
Heavy and golden, the moonlight sank to earth on a parachute of stars and brought everything around me out of the shadows -...
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May.08.2009
How she remembers it after all this time, I couldn’t tell you.
In Indiana, not far from where we used to live, there’s a county road with a few miles of great hills - the kind that when you drive over them (a little above the speed limit, necessarily) make your stomach leap and fall.
My...
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Apr.27.2009
Some stories go on, even when we wish they would end.
This, I know.
My fingers tingle with wanting to snap the book closed. My mouth opens to declare well, that’s that so I can get on with the next story, whole and separate and not tied to the last. A brand new Once upon a time followed by the...
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Apr.19.2009
You can find Parts I, II and III here.
And so we drove away from the house. I was headed back to college after winter break, and didn’t know that I would never sleep in my old room again. Something big had happened, yes, but I had no solid reason to believe I wasn’t coming back, that I was leaving...
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Mar.28.2009
I look out my kitchen window just in time to watch a cactus wren fly toward a small saguaro cactus and then land on it, quite safely. It always amazes me to see this, and I wonder, every time, how does the bird know how to land without getting hurt?
Without thinking it, this line is in my...
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Mar.21.2009
Mary Chapin Carpenter sings the words, half a beat behind me as I write them. And somehow sings ahead of me, too, which makes no kind of sense, just is.
It’s a good song - catchy and soulful at once.
I’m pretty sure we have a hit on our hands, not that Mary’s ever needed any help from me. She...
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Mar.05.2009
I sit in my office, at the east-facing window, tweezers in one hand and a mirror in the other. The perfect light for some overdue eyebrow maintenance. Bright, natural light.
Forgiving, it isn’t. (And talk about hairs apparent.)
After a few busy and painful moments, I finish. And then.
As I lean...
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Mar.02.2009
Once, years ago, I had the chance to go turkey hunting. My soon-to-be (first) husband was a hunter and offered to take me along and I, wanting to prove myself in some way, said yes. (There’s a part of me - the Missouri in me - that reaches for things that are rugged and elemental, and I knew this...
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Feb.23.2009
I should have written this Saturday night, but I couldn’t quite get there. You know how it is when you’re really craving good cheese or strawberries or (let’s face it) Doritos, but you can’t bring yourself to drive to the store? So you decide that maybe you can hold off until tomorrow? It was like...
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Feb.18.2009
I hear the words rise easy and worn to my lips. Be careful.
My boy climbs the sloped trunk of the tree in front of our house. A monkey, a scout, Tarzan. My girl follows, more timid, a stuffed unicorn tucked under one arm, and I say it again, louder. Be careful. Up the trunk, she eases herself,...
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Feb.13.2009
Last night, I spent some time looking through the files on my computer, hoping to stumble across something that would inspire me to write a post. Maybe a scrap of prose that never quite found a home, or a photo that would cast its line, heavy with bait, and pull an old story from the bottom of my...
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About Jennifer
Here’s what I know. Sometimes life shows off the prettiest damn view you’ve ever seen, and sometimes it looks like the darkest dark alley from a gritty movie. The sun comes out, or it disappears. The road lies flat as a closed book until it reaches the...
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