Hope Edelman's Blog, page 4

The Blue Bicycle

I've been in Iowa for a solid week now, time enough for quite a few things to happen. I could write about the amount of rain that's come down on us in the past eight days; or how the Iowa River is at grass level in City Park and threatening to flood; or about how happy I am to be a pedestrian again for much of the day; or about the three-day road trip to Missouri that Eden and I just took to visit Maya at camp.

But what I really want to write about is my new sky-blue bicycle.

Eden and I found ...

June 17, 2010

Today is my 46th birthday. (As well as the birthday of Barry Manilow, M.C. Escher, Igor Stravinsky, my friend Nicolle's mother and, if rumor is correct, Jesus.) I post this not so I can solicit birthday wishes --though those are always nice to receive-- but because in the past few years, birthdays have become an odd and reflective experience for me. Definitely of the love/hate variety. Like any woman approaching a (ahem) certain age, I'm ambivalent about marking the passage of time. And yet a...

An Open Letter to Motherless Daughters on Mother's Day weekend

(My mother and I in Florida, April 1967)



On a Mother's Day morning about eight or nine years ago, my daughter Maya, who was then still in preschool, surprised me with breakfast in bed. On the wooden tray she proudly thrust onto my lap was a cup of orange juice, a whole apple still cold from the refrigerator, and her version of a "cheese sandwich": a slice of cheese between two slices of cheese.

The cheese sandwich has become an annual tradition in our family, sometimes presented to me on the m...

Hanging with Authors and Thinkers at the LATFOB

The LA Times Festival of Books was last weekend, and like most attendees, I imagine, I was left with two overriding impressions: first, extreme jubilation that so many people showed up this year, especially this year, in support of authors and the written word; and second, total overwhelm from having been in the presence of 400 authors and 130,000 attendees on the UCLA campus over just two days.

If you're a participating author, your time at the festival always begins in the author's green roo...

Earth Day 2010

I feel about Earth Day sort of the way I feel about Mother's Day. As in, shouldn't every day be Earth Day? Still, I'm always up for a reason to celebrate it once a year in Topanga, where the festival has evolved into a two-day happening of live music, dancing, demonstrations, face painting, hula hooping, and really excellent vegan food booths.

The girls and I went both days this year, accompanied on Saturday by our friends Amy and Eber who came up from San Diego for the festivities. Since the...

Floating Outdoor Bed

Would you want to sleep outside all the time if you had one of these?

Random Mat Hatter and friends

Maya and her friend at Earth Day

Write By the Beach

It's been a couple of years since I last taught private writing workshops--mostly because motherhood and a book deadline and a tour didn't leave much time for quality teaching. But I've missed working with students terribly, and helping them tell their stories. The classroom is where I feel most comfortable, and there's truly nothing like helping a writer break through a creative barrier and start producing winning prose.

So I've just put two weekend workshops on the calendar, and I hope you'l...

Joannie Rochette Takes the Bronze

Like everyone else in America this week, I was captivated by the story of Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette. Just a few hours after Rochette's 55-year-old mother arrived in Vancouver to watch her daughter skate in the Winter Olympics, she died from a sudden and massive heart attack.

And her daughter continued to compete.

Some people may find this disconcerting, even heartless, but I found it enormously brave. We can only imagine the kind of focus and control it must have taken for Rochet...