Emily Brisse

Good morning, It it raining here, lightly, and the view out my window is an ecstatic shaking green. I am three floors up, and yet I do not see the sky, I do not see the ground: just trunks and branches and leaves, close and middling and deep. What a scene to wake to! As ridiculous as these last months have been, these trees are saving me. Have saved me. Are already old friends.  I see now I'm going to have to write about them. Later. Soon. Graduation for the seniors tonight. And then: summer. Spring was a new house. A new roof. New floors and carpets and paint and cabinet liner and drawer pulls and towels. It was so much more space, these large open rooms that echoed even with our whispers. It was windows, light streaming in through the then bare branches. It was one holy morning when the buds popped open, and everywhere was suddenly yellow green and green yellow and holy holy holy. It was worrying about an old house with holes and trusting a new world so very able to fill it...

When I was a June twenty-two, one week fresh from graduation, I took a flight to Lubbock and wore cowboy hats with friends as young and sweet as grass. One night we put on skirts and tall boots and ambled through the halls  of an old restaurant, bourbon and whiskey  in glasses, all very kin to cigars  and mustaches, dark with ranch wood. The stars would be bright, the moon uncommonly full in that wide sky, so we stepped outside, a slight chill wrapping down our boots and around our ankles, expecting Texas. Instead, the screams of a child-- two children? more?--broke the twilight, and I gaped up--up, for they were in the trees,  perched and wailing at the coming dark, pleading in a language I couldn't decipher. “Peacocks,” a man said, amused, thumb in his pocket. I know because I stared at him in astonishment. Pressed pants. No belt buckle. Thin tie. No cowboy hat. Peacocks in trees, their tail feathers draped ...

Hi all, This one will be short on descriptions, but long on heart. What I mean is: I have never been so busy in my life. What I mean is: the winter is cold, work is great, my son is beautiful, family is important, sleep is restless, and the lists are miles and miles long. Don't be mistaken -- this is all our doing, whether consciously or not. You see, we've gone and bought a house. A fixer-upper. We close tomorrow.  It's all about to get very very interesting. So, friends, that, among many other reasons, is why I've spent less time here recently. However, it cheers me to know I can come back whenever I feel the desire. Like today. Like right now, as I type these letters into words and press publish, as I share something of my life, and genuinely hope you do the same. Below is what I've been into these last three months (when I wasn't creating lessons and grading essays and signing documents and filing taxes and contacting contractors and building the big...

One Tuesday afternoon, a month or so ago, I lay stretched out on my bed, my not-quite-two-year-old son cuddled between my arm and body, reading poetry aloud. " Before I was sixteen / I was fast / enough to fake / my shadow out," I read. "The instructor said, / Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you-- / Then, it will be true." "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--" I placed my lips against the feverish brow of my boy, my fingers running along the length of his arm, reading over the top of my worry. Reading because the sound had soothed him, had taken him away from the limbs of his discomfort. Reading. [... And speaking of reading, you can read the rest at Mamalode. ]

May your new year be full of adventure and clarity. (And lots of reading, writing, big hopes, simple dreams, and chocolate.) xo from the north shore of Minnesota!

Hi all, First, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday: gratitude, good food, and family. I hope you spent it with those you care about most. This fall has given me a lot to be thankful for. My darling boy is just a few months away from turning two years old, and th is autumn ha s been so f ull of his mind lat ching onto every thing and finding ways to communicate that it's been , well, magical. How does a child just sudden ly string a six -word sentence together? And his personality , this mini-man, who is forming in front of me? Tonight he was all about "running hugs, " the kind where he takes off from across the room and propel s himself into my arms, all while laughing his little boy laugh. Which is loud. Which is music. Amen. Wo rk has also been incredibly fulfilling. I love my li fe as a mother. But I also look forward to doing what I do inside of my classroom . I find such satisfaction i n sharing liter ature with kids who wa...