a precarious climb

A brief introduction, or why the Rickety Ladder. Long ago, I made several trips cross-country in my 1986 Honda Civic ("Georgia Rae") with the guy who would turn out to be my husband. It turns out that traversing Louisiana, Texas, and the Southwest in September without A/C is a highly effective route to higher consciousness. Unlike our law- and med school-bound college classmates, we were entering the Great Beyond with no real plan. We declared to the open road that we would climb a rickety ladder to heaven, rather than the sure ones, and enjoyed a fleeting smugness. A year later we weren't talking to each other.

Eighteen years later, we live in Brooklyn with two little boys and a third expected in December. Blame it on the fall, or the shofar, or the knowledge that this will be my last pregnancy, but I feel the rungs passing under my feet each day and don't want them to disappear all together into the mist of time. And so I will try to capture a few here.