Madeleine E. Robins's Blog: Madeleine Robins: Journal, page 4

Raised in a Barn: Green Acres

[image error]As best I can figure it, my parents bought the Barn when I was not-quite 5. What they bought was a sturdy, shabby Victorian farmhouse, a double barn (two barns built together, one old enough to have pegged joints, the other somewhat newer), several ramshackle outbuildings, and 180 acres of land–about 60 of it meadow, the rest on the mountain behind the barn.

All my father really wanted was the Barn to play with, as he put it.

The farmhouse was handy for the first three or four years, in that...

Taking Nothing for Granted

[image error]My mother developed glaucoma in her early 40s (discovered when my brother sat on her glasses, necessitating an eye exam) and, because it was discovered early, the worst that accrued to her was daily eyedrops–in fact, her eyesight improved somewhat. My father, who had had eagle eyes all his life, developed macular degeneration in his 80s, and that didn’t end so happily; he became profoundly visually impaired (not completely blind, but close enough). So since my 30s I have considered an annual...

Feeling Memoirish

[image error]I have on occasion contributed a series to this blog called “Raised in a Barn.” It is a loose series of anecdotes about my, um, colorful childhood, spent between Greenwich Village (in the 1960s) and the converted barn in rural Massachusetts we moved to when I was 13. Want to know what my landscape looked like when I was a secen-year-old: watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel*, which is set in New York in the early 1960s. I loved living in New York, which had for me a sort of fizzy tonic effect, but...

Nowhere Near Fun

[image error]I remember the Big Three of Childhood Diseases because I had all of them. I am of that vintage where I was young enough to be vaccinated against smallpox and polio (for which I am abundantly grateful, let me tell you). But I had mumps (on at least one side), and rubella, (and chicken pox, the also-ran of childhood diseases), and measles.

My memories of chicken pox involve feeling ill on the day I was supposed to go to the Zoo with my best friend, and lying on the hall floor in our apartment s...

Can You Wear the Bottoms of Your Trousers Rolled When You Don’t Wear Trousers?

This photo was taken when Emily, the household dog, was a spry young animal of four or five: she is vigilantly looking out on our street, watching for skateboarders or other dogs. Skateboarders are her particular abhorrence.

These days Em doesn’t stand in the window surveilling. Her hearing is not so great, her eyesight’s iffy, and more than that, her knees are in bad shape.

When she was about six she tore the right ACL and required surgery (and six weeks of tranquilizers so she would hold st...

At Curious Fictions: Cuckoo

This week: Cuckoo, a story about a woman who adopts a foundling who turns out to be very different from what she expects.

Honey, I Broke the Kids

[image error]Let’s say you have a child, and if you’re lucky enough that she arrives with all the correct bits and pieces–spleen and fingernails and skeletal system–you feel a little like you’ve won a lottery. Maybe it turns out that the kid needs glasses, or inherited your easily-sunburned skin, but by and large, if you are lucky, your relationship with that child is predicated on the notion you have provided the correct genetic material to create a decent “container” for the person who is learning and g...

This Week at Curious Fictions: Willie

One of my favorite stories, inspired by viewing Kenneth Brannagh’s Frankenstein and wondering what the doctor has against parenthood.

A Loss: Vonda N. McIntyre

Vonda died yesterday. She was one of my favorite writers: the author of Dreamsnake and The Exile Waiting, and the gorgeous The Moon and the Sun, the woman who in passing gave Mr. Sulu a first name. She was a smart, complex, generous person; I always had a sense of “huh, Vonda McIntyre knows who I am,” but that was me being star-struck, not Vonda being a star. She was also a pivotal member of Book View Cafe, and she will be missed by all of us. She finished her last book a week or so before...

This Week’s Story: Boon

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Boon is my take on elves in New York. Short version: it’s not all glamor (especially if you’re a single mother or a Brownie). It’s live on Curious Fictions. Check it out!