Laura Davis

The Liberating Failure of Learning Something New

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I got this hair-brained idea last summer that I wanted to learn a language. It all started when I went to Paris with my daughter, who happily chattered her way through Paris cafes and department stores, through the Uzes market negotiating for AOC goat cheese and brightly colored napkins, ordering the bits of duck we cooked on a grill at our table outdoors in the plaza in front of our glorious, sun-drenched apartment. There she was, petite and lanky and gorgeous, perfectly dressed and coiffed in that casual but perfect teenage way she has, ordering le chocolat chaud and canard-being told everywhere what a great accent she had-while I couldn't even ask where the bathroom was.

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Sending a Son to College Feels Like This

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I was sixteen when I turned down a full scholarship to Wellesley College. I don’t remember what that scholarship was worth in 1972 dollars, but I’d have to say, from my perspective now, that it would have been priceless. Wellesley offered me an open door into science and philosophy and language and strong women and self-esteem and intellectual passion that could have opened the world to me. They offered me Aristotle and Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre and Collette, Emily Dickinson and Michelangelo. They offered me classical sculpture, medieval history and macroeconomics, the riches of the Renaissance, fluency in a language, travel abroad, and in 1972, the rare opportunity to live at the beating heart of the emerging ... [Continue Reading]

The Waterfall

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I remember wondering why the hell I had agreed to do this. But I knew why. Because Lizzy wanted to. Because I work hard to please my children. We were on a mother-daughter bonding trip to Costa Rica and riding horses to a wild mountain waterfall was one of the few things Lizzy had asked to do. She’d been totally disappointed when she found out she wasn’t old enough to ride ATVs in the jungle. So how could I say no to riding to a hidden waterfall in the rain forest?

There are times when my ability to forget unpleasant experiences is an asset; other times it is a real drag. This time, when I said, “Sure we can go,” I was forgetting the other time I had gone horseback riding in Central America.

Twenty years ago, Karyn ... [Continue Reading]

Anticipating the Empty Nest

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Eli is away at a three-week program sponsored by Stanford University for high school students interested in math and science. He’s taking an intensive class in topology, something esoteric and mathy that has to do with studying the surface of knots. I have no idea whatsoever what they’re studying. Or why. But Eli chose it and it’s clear he’s having fun. He sounds confident and full of himself.

I miss him terribly.

Lately, I’ve been walking around looking at mothers and fathers with their toddlers and infants, mothers with children in playgrounds, and I realize how very long it’s been since I was a hands-on mother in that 24/7 kind of way.

Eli has been away for two weeks so far. In all that time, it has never once ... [Continue Reading]

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