How to Pack a Life into a Paragraph
Six of life's quintessential moments are captured in these micro-memoirs from the book Heating & Cooling.
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Married Love
In every book my husband's written, a character named Colin suffers a horrible death. This is because my boyfriend before I met my husband was named Colin. In addition to being named Colin, he was Scottish, and an architect. So you understand my husband's feelings of inadequacy. My husband cannot build a tall building of many stories. He can only build a story, and then push Colin out of it.
I Come from a Long Line of Modest Achievers
I'm fond of recalling how my mother is fond of recalling how my great-grandfather was the very first person to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on the second day.
Why I'm Switching Salons
"We can put on a topcoat with glitter," said the manicurist. "We've noticed you like attention."
Married Love II
There will come a day—let it be many years from now—when your kids realize no married couple ever needed to retreat at high noon behind their locked bedroom door to discuss taxes.
Married Love III
As we lower onto the December-cold pleather seats of the minivan, we knock hands: both of us reaching to turn on the other's seat warmer first.
Married Love IV
Morning: bought a bag of frozen peas to numb my husband's sore testicles after his vasectomy. Evening: added thawed peas to our carbonara.
Reprinted from Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, by Beth Ann Fennelly. Copyright © 2017 by Beth Ann Fennelly. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
In every book my husband's written, a character named Colin suffers a horrible death. This is because my boyfriend before I met my husband was named Colin. In addition to being named Colin, he was Scottish, and an architect. So you understand my husband's feelings of inadequacy. My husband cannot build a tall building of many stories. He can only build a story, and then push Colin out of it.
I Come from a Long Line of Modest Achievers
I'm fond of recalling how my mother is fond of recalling how my great-grandfather was the very first person to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on the second day.
Why I'm Switching Salons
"We can put on a topcoat with glitter," said the manicurist. "We've noticed you like attention."
Married Love II
There will come a day—let it be many years from now—when your kids realize no married couple ever needed to retreat at high noon behind their locked bedroom door to discuss taxes.
Married Love III
As we lower onto the December-cold pleather seats of the minivan, we knock hands: both of us reaching to turn on the other's seat warmer first.
Married Love IV
Morning: bought a bag of frozen peas to numb my husband's sore testicles after his vasectomy. Evening: added thawed peas to our carbonara.
Reprinted from Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, by Beth Ann Fennelly. Copyright © 2017 by Beth Ann Fennelly. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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