I had not worn the socks in years when I fished them out of the back of the drawer. They had survived the journey to college and six subsequent moves. They were one of the few relics of my past that had not been destroyed in the recent fire that consumed my mother’s home. They…
Dear Friends, As you know, Rand and I are social creatures. We thrive on seeing the people we love, on following the winding paths of your lives, on quietly building a history of private jokes and shared experiences together. We aren’t simply growing old with each other, we are growing old with all of you,…
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being on Dan Moyle’s podcast, The Storytellers Network. I’m always a bit hesitant to go on podcasts. I love chatting with people, but my relationship with the spoken word isn’t quite what it is with the written one. I tend to ramble unless I have a…
It’s December, which means that you’ve probably read all of the daring thinkpieces about how Love, Actually is the greatest holiday movie, ever, despite its many, many flaws, or the other, more daring thinkpieces about how Love, Actually, is the worst holiday movie, ever, because of the aforementioned flaws. And I shouldn’t be adding gasoline…
It is with some embarrassment that I tell you that I hated Genoa the first time I visited there, a decade and a lifetime ago. In my book, the only mention I make of the seaside city – the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, the location where Marco Polo was imprisoned for a year (because Italy…
The emergency porchetta was my favorite part of the trip. That is a strange thing to say for a lot of reasons. For one, I don’t know if the concept of emergency porchetta is widely known. A Google search for the term reveals four results, the most salient of which is someone looking for cooking…
The letter arrived at my house at the end of October in a plain white envelope with no return address. My name – or some approximation of it (“Depruiter” it reads, because, in the words of my beloved, “The person who addressed it is an idiot”) has been printed out on a label and affixed…
I don’t know when the idea for this year’s Halloween costume originated. Rand and I have been talking about it for years. It’s the sort of thing that stays simmering on the back burner for so long that you almost have to wonder if it’ll ever come to fruition, or if the idea will simply…
I have yet to call my in-laws (my husband’s grandparents) in the wake of a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. A few days have passed. For the collective American consciousness, the lifespan of a mass shooting is short. The newscycle has already moved on, as has everyone’s social media posts. (Even this post, written two…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
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