Emily Brisse

All, It's...the middle of June! How that happened, I can't explain. Well, I can, but the explanation will be a very simple one: baby. Baby, baby, baby. How sweet she is, and how sweet it is to be her mother. All the feels. All the gazing. All the lazy afternoons in bed. And now that her brother has joined us for the summer, all the ways in which we are settling into the new dimensions of our days (and nights). Who knows when I will read a full book again!? No matter. I am reading other things: cries, coos, wide eyes, the width of her milky thighs, the way she responds to the wind. It is not for everyone, this mothering, but I am glad it is for me. Books:   Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into The Mystery and Art of Living  by Krista Tippett -- I really truly think this was the only book I read this spring. And if I was going to read one book only, I'm so glad this was it. It was one of my favorite books that I've read in years. It's not one to read quickly. You c...

Hey all, I don't know about you, but this has been a strange and sometimes scary but often wonderful end-of-winter. To say that it is already March feels bizarre, but at the same time, here in Minnesota we've experienced one of the warmest winters on record, so...despite my reservations about what this means for our planet, I'm already in spring mode. And since I'm due to meet my second baby in early April, there is no rewinding for me: Spring is arrival. Spring is wakefulness. Spring is revelation. I say: Welcome, welcome. I'd love to hear what you've all been up to. I'm not sure how much reading I'll get to in the coming months (buh-bye, hands-free bedtime routine!), but I always keep a will-read-later list running. Suggestions, please! And I hope the sun warms you in these coming months all the way down to the bone. Books:   Madness , Rack, and Honey  by Mary Ruefle -- Ruefle was a professor of mine in grad school, and the title of this, ...

Hello world, What an autumn, huh? In Minnesota, the weather has been fantastically long and glorious. We didn't have our first frost until just before Thanksgiving. That meant a lot of time outside, and some grateful leniency with how long we had to rake up all those millions of yellow leaves. And also, there was the election in there, which threw everyone I knew for a loop, no matter which side of the political line they landed on. It's still something many of us are sifting through, and the mess has been hard to see around at times. But it all keeps moving forward, doesn't it? I'm holding as many people's hands as I can. As we crest into the holiday season, however, I've decided to focus on how very much I have to be thankful for. Did you know that there's a lot of research on how practicing intentional gratitude on a daily basis actually has positive effects on one's health ? It's no shock to me, but I like knowing there is science behind it....

Hi Friends, I'll be saying this with a sigh, but O Summer!  I am already deep into classes with my students, and where it does feel good to be back with young minds talking about things that matter, summer is a particular treasure. We were everyday outside, at parks, at beaches, in lakes and rivers and streams, up to our armpits in our garden flowers. We also spent a lot of time with family and friends, at cabins, birthday parties, splashpads, and swimming lessons. My boy learned to fish. He wanted to fish every day. He would spot the earthworm wiggling into the hole behind the branch and grab it, lift it up, study its perfectly spaced indentations. I watched his body lengthen, and I listened to him tell me stories, and it is a little astonishing to me, that I have been in this world for three and a half years with him, and he is still articulating things with the lift of his eyelashes that I hadn't known existed. I am a proud mama, a happy mama, a mama thankful for a seaso...

Friends, Today is the last day of school for my students, and although I'll continue through the end of the week with my colleagues in workshops and other wrap-up activities, summer has arrived. It's been another wonderful year, but I can't think of one solitary person who doesn't love these two words put together: summer break. Summer break! Oh, for a few months in which to go where the wind blows me, do what the whims insist! Perhaps I'll show up here a bit more? Or perhaps I'll disappear still deeper into this marsh that is my back yard, what with its wildflowers and ferns and maples and oaks and ash and cottonwood and beech and tamarack stands. I am rippling with contentment. Can you tell? Like the leaves. Like the air, blue and redolent, and so very very close.  Books:   The Progress of Love by Alice Munro -- The entire collection is wonderful, but "Miles City, Montana" struck at my heart with a force. The Small Backs of Children  by...

Hello, friends. So tell me: how is it where you live? Here we are in Minnesota already on the declining side of a short and warmish winter. There were cold spells, certainly. But really: Not that bad. It all was made immeasureably better by the fact of a small child and sleds and hills and a backyard marsh that was made to be explored in  snow pants  and boots. It is something strange that we remember so little of what it was like to be very  young, because it is so full of wonder. I wish I could recall more of my own early experiences with snow, with animal tracks, with a full moon through empty trees leaving rectangles of light on the wooden floors. But that is part of the joy of parenting, I suppose. A selfish part. The living again through another younger body. In any case, it has been a sweet season. Winter has also brought us fewer house projects, and therefore more time for reading, writing, lazy mornings, hearty meals, and occasional adventures. I'm r...

Dear everyone, It is early December, and after a memorably beautiful and mild autumn where the leaves all but blazed out our windows, we had our first snow storm of the season early this week. The subsequent stretch of 40' days, though, turned the white quickly to water.  Which  is kind of how this season has felt for me. Things happen. And then all evidence of them is gone. And you wonder if you just blinked or were instead in some kind of truly beautiful but exhausting dream. My husband and I talk a lot about the pace of our lives, whether it's healthy, how we could slow down, what we might take out. It's hard because we could make different choices: live in a smaller house, live in a smaller town, have one of us--me, probably--stay home to tend the home and this darling small child we've welcomed into this busy world. But we've come to love our house. And we like where we live. And my job, though it is incredibly demanding, fills me up and up and up (everyday...

Good morning, (And an early morning it is.) Last spring I could blame these sleepless a.m. hours on the turkeys roosting in the trees outside my window, but now I only have my swirling mind to point to. These are some of the things I would like/need to do, possibly today: transplant several hostas, dig up and move a good many big rocks, water the rudbeckia, move the shelves in the garage, organize the garage (!), call the insurance company, clip the little guy's fingernails, keep writing that essay, start writing college recommendations, finish rereading The Glass Castle, and oh (!) take in that sunrise. That list will be a starting point, anyway. And much of it will keep me outside, in the air that has already taken on a hint of autumn.  It's an exciting time of year, friends. Often stressful. But so very full of a pulsing, thrumming, chirping, calling, rushing, crunching, thrusting kind of life. Summer, as always, was a sweet reprieve where instead of teaching I spent ...