Snapshots from Suburbia: Images from the Underbelly

This one simply called, "Soccer," is a tale of a mother who has taken too many pictures, attended too many practices, made too much small talk. The introverted mother cannot understand why five-year-olds need so many stations and why for the love of Jesus and all the saints in Heaven, the practice ran for 1 hour and 45 minutes, when it should have been 45 minutes. The kids are hungry and cold. The grass, burnt and yellowing from a lack of care and water, seems a metaphor for the mother, and for all mothers and fathers. And parenting is hard and soccer is stupid.

Ghosts

As I walk through my home, the one I make with my children, there are ghosts everywhere--reminders of the person I used to be. My grandmother's dining room table, bought when I was in eighth grade, just before Christmas, was inherited after her death. The children use it to color pictures and draw worlds culled from their imaginations. The chairs, already reupholstered once, wear the various stains a life with children dictates, and the wood is wearing down and uneven.