Anatomy of a Helicopter

I wait for the bus while standing in front of the chicken rice shop on River Valley Road. The smell is unavoidable, but I work hard to avert my eyes from the pallid poultry hung by their feet in a crowded row in the window behind me. The bumpy, flaccid chicken skin gleaming with slime. How this is considered gourmet, I will never understand.

But then again there’s a lot I’ll never understand about this place, no matter how much I lo...

Under a dark sky, with the sun still asleep, I cradle my weary body into the hug of my plush cushioned chair with my newborn son in my arms. As he nurses, I just stare down as his chest rises and falls with the miracle of breath.

At just a few weeks old he seems to know my heart, and his tiny fingers softly press into my waist. A hug.

Always a kid to say thank you at exactly the moment it will melt your heart, as a young mother I ima...

Lately, opening my Instagram is like being trapped in a funhouse mirror maze nightmare of my own creation.

Everywhere I turn, a distorted image of myself leers back at me, every uninvited ad a self-perception so amplified it stings. I am self aware and savvy enough to understand that I have bartered away my consumer data in exchange for an endless stream of pictures of my high school friends’ children, and — mostly — I can accept th...

The women in my family all have the same laugh – or cackle, depending on your point of view, or tolerance for joy.

I have an infinite tolerance for joy.

It starts like a spark. Catches on like wildfire. One by one, we ignite in a noisy cacophony.

When I was a kid, my grandma was usually the one who started it. The laugh would begin in her belly and then explode into to a shriek. It would roll across the dining room table as each of th...

Welcome to Anatomy of a Helicopter. I’m here for the crazy. I’m here for the wild ideas and huge dreams. I’m here for the loud, clunky, complicated things that shouldn’t fly — let alone land — and somehow are our heroes of the day. I’m here for the moments that remind us that the beauty lies in the chaos.

Come fly with me.

I’ve been in the top 1% of Yo-Yo Ma listeners worldwide on Spotify for four years in a row.

Like any good Gen Xer, I’ve long lusted for Eddie Vedder. And in my middle age, I developed a deep crush on John Mayer the very moment I heard him croon the first half of Terrapin Station with Dead & Co. But Eddie and John’s melodic sensuality are no match for the aching bend of the cello strings, and Yo-Yo Ma is the only music man I’ve claim...

“I think there should be a cocktail bar in here,” the frazzled woman sitting in the opposite chair in the mammogram waiting room declared as she fiddled with the frayed ties of her thin radiology gown.

It was 9:43 a.m. on a Thursday.

“I don’t drink,” she quickly tried to assure me. “But there’s a time for everything.”

I do drink. Though not like I used to (hello, night sweats!), and typically not at 9:43 a.m. on a Thursday, but I coul...

My dear beautiful man once told me that a woman of my stature deserves a coffee maker.

I was barely making ends meet. Newly divorced, determined to keep my kids and I in our house, balancing my finances through an ongoing stream of creative math, but somehow making it all land in a place of joy, renewal and love.

Optimism couldn’t plug the silver-dollar-sized hole and subsequent leak in my basement, but sheer will and an uncanny abil...

There is a rooster weathervane atop the house next door. Its arrow points west, I believe, but I can’t see the letters clearly with my reading glasses on.

I never noticed the rooster before, such a cliched trinket atop our otherwise carefully cultivated bubble because the main window in my meditation station, where I write most mornings, looked out onto a plum tree which bloomed delicate white flowers in the spring and the tiny juic...