The Chicken Family: Sort of like The Partridge Family, but with less talent and more husbands

  I’ve told you stories about my family but I’ve never explained my family. This is because that’s complicated. But I’m feeling expansive tonight so what the heck, here goes. In short, it’s a big, messy, beautiful love story. Let’s ease into it with this also familiar story line… Here’s the story of a lovely…

Butter Files: For the love of God, give that baby a pickle!

My father wants me to give the baby a pickle.  Inside my head, where he lives now, I can hear his voice. He’s been pestering me since we passed the pickle aisle. He’s a little insulted, frankly, that the baby hasn’t already been indoctrinated to these and other vinegary delights (he’s also a big fan…

Butter Files: I smell dead things

I must have been  11 or 12-years-old when my father was summoned to the hill  by the uncles.  Old Bob had gone into the woods and never come out. They put together a search party to find the body. Maybe  it was just their pessimistic yankee natures or maybe I was shielded from  the facts of the situation,…

The Butter Files: Back to School Shopping

My youngest starts school next week.  We have not bought one single practical thing.  We have bought a very exclusive set of Pokemon cards and a Pokeman Ball.  You can’t start school without some winning Pokemon cards, according to littleb. When I was a kid we went back-to-school shopping every August. One year, my step…

Butter Files: Uncle Don

We were returning home from a family trip, seven of us packed like sardines into the Chrysler station wagon.  As our home came into view, my Stepmom was the first to make the connection. “Oh no!”, she groaned. “What?” we all thought, looking at each other.  Did we forget something?  Did we hit a cat?…

On The Increasingly Complex Algorithm of Parenthood

When I was 15 or so I asked my dad to help me with some algebra homework.  I was not good at algebra way back then (she notes, as though she might be much better at algebra now) but my father was purported to be quite handy at math so who better to ask? My…

If I Hadn’t Been So Focused on Becoming the First Taylor Swift, I Might Have Invented the Internet

When I was 13 and firmly in the clutches of that ultimate mean girl, puberty, I discovered poetry. Months were spent producing emo ballads exploring my obsessive crushes on various high school seniors, pop stars, and, bewilderingly, MacGyver.  It eventually occurred to me, probably during a lucid dream also involving a Maxfield Parrish painting and a…

Paper or Shoes

In the town where I was raised there were two main industries, paper and shoes.  In most families one or both parents worked in either the paper mills or the shoe factories.  Kids grew up and often followed in their parents footsteps; paper or shoes. Our family was a shoe family.  My father was an engineer…

Butter Files: The Christians and The Pagans of Macomber Hill

M was the Catholic kid next door.  Our families have been neighbors for as long as I can remember.  M was raised in a structured, consistent environment, the kind Dr. Spock would have prescribed, with a Dad who worked shifts at the paper mill and a Mom who stayed home with the kids, managing their…

Butter Files: Drug Lords

Note:  My father was born into a large farming family in central Maine. He grew up, married twice (consecutively, not at the same time), and had five kids.  Everyone called him “Butter”.  Butter Files stories are about his side of the family (as opposed to the Vi Chronicles, starring my mom, Violet.)I had two great…