Ellen Herrick

Author of The Sparrow Sisters

20/20

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It’s time to put on my reflecto-vision glasses.  What?  You don’t have a pair?  You know, the ones you buy off the back of an Archie comic, right next to the X-ray Specs and the itching powder.  Most people go for the X-ray Specs because the picture shows a lady in her undies.  But, in case you haven’t wasted that allowance yet, they don’t work.  The reflecto-vision glasses, on the other hand, are guaranteed to show you the past with a mixture of insight and nausea.  I know, mine are hanging on the chain with my readers. January is as good an excuse as any to take a look through them.

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Just a Moment

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I find myself strangely shaken by the absence of our two boys.  It started on the drive to the airport after we dropped Will off at Kenyon in Gambier, Ohio (where?).  It had been bucketing down the whole day before as we unloaded his stuff and settled him into his room.  The rain threw itself against his dorm room windows as I tucked in sheets and folded duvets.  The wind rattled the frames while David, Will and I stared at his roommate (perfectly nice boy) while he hung a massive American flag over his bed.  The sky stayed resolutely heavy and gray all through our jolly dinner on a porch already wet with the day’s weather.

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Weep No More, My Lady

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Here is something you should know about me.  I’m not a crier, not really.  I do not cry about sad/bad things happening in my life.  Ever.  I didn’t cry when my mother died.  I’m not a hard-hearted Hannah, I just don’t cry about the big things.  I do, however, weep copiously when small children sing at school concerts.  I cry when I see a little person lost in the supermarket.  I cry when I see a balloon floating away in the sky.  I have been known to cry at that 1970s ad for some do-good organization that features a kid in group home writing a letter to Santa asking for a puppy.  Does anyone remember that ad?  One kid says “Santa won’t bring you a puppy!”  And then, the do-gooder volunteer/ Secret Santa/postal worker guy reads the letter.  On Christmas morning, the kid finds a puppy waiting for him.  Of course he does.  The look on his face?  Priceless.  The look on the pooh-poohing kid’s face?  Oh, the humanity!!

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Who’s That Girl? No, Really, Who?

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Now, before you begin to wonder, “does this woman not have an un-posted thought? let me just say that we all have a junk drawer.  You know the one, bits, bobs, knobs and knockers.  Mine has about five old mobile phone batteries and a few lira, francs and pesetas.  And, oh no, here’s an envelope with one of Emma’s baby teeth!  Does that mean that I forgot to be the tooth fairy, or that I remembered and chucked the tooth in a drawer without thought?  I don’t know which scenario is worse.  It’s not like I can ask her.

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Care and Feeding

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One of my first jobs was at a not-for-profit think tank.  I figured out pretty damn quick that I needed profit to live in New York City.  I also noticed that at 23 I was too easily distract–oooh, something shiny!–ed to do much of the thinking thing.  So, wisely, I went to work in publishing.  I mean, I read walking down the street, surely I would really focus if it was my job.

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