23 Comments
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Erin Shetron's avatar

The last lines have me tearing up. Shit. This was so so good. You did that.

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Madeline's avatar

4.

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B.A. Lampman's avatar

Pure sweet honey this piece is.

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Katrina Donham's avatar

HOLY SHIT, ALEX! BRAVO!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

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Courtney Romano's avatar

I didn't know about bee spit. But this tracks with how life is.

This whole essay tracks with how life, and storytelling, and becoming is. Some parts of this piece were so moving to me that I had to look away for a sec because I didn't feel like crying just then.

How something can be true, and yet not real, is a concept that rattles around for me a lot as I approach my own writing, and you were able to make the experience of that hard-to-catch idea so vivid and meaningful. Thank you. Did NOT know I needed to read that today.

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Molly Simpson's avatar

Damn Dobrenko, this is some sweet spit 🐝🍯 chimes with something I wrote once about Why I Write as “chewing on the cud of my one earthly existence” but I prefer the bee metaphor fo sure.

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E.L. Zeitgeist's avatar

Wow. If I were in charge of awards, I’d give you one for this. Brilliant ask the way, Alex 🥹🐝

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M. Louisa Locke's avatar

I really love your wilder and emma june stories. And one of our favorite family stories with our daughter is the year we were sitting around enjoying the decorated xmas tree in our living room when we heard the sound, ribbit, ribbit. When we peered to the trunk, on it was a teeny-tiny frog. Which we rescued and put outside so one of our cats or dogs didn't get it. Such a fun memory!

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Life with Ink's avatar

God bless the Annes of the world

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Mike "Bagel"'s avatar

Harry teets!

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Shirin Soltani's avatar

this was so lovely! we really are just the stories we tell ourselves

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Bradley Krzysztow's avatar

I just screenshot your intro about the hobby of retelling events that just happened, and sent it to my wife. Our daughter LOVES doing this 😂.

I actually did read (in a Daniel Siegel book?) that doing this helps create those “Kodak moments”, which help cement memories for kids. Constant retelling of stories helps.

We had no idea how helpful our digital picture frame could be with this. It seems like our daughter has stories that accompany every picture 😂

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Tanya Mozias's avatar

Wow, Alex, this was so good. I'll never look at honey (or stories) the same way again.

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Nick's avatar

Can’t remember where but Ocean Vuong said “start with truth and end with art” 💜💜

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Life as Women Laughing's avatar

Loved your essay and the Wilder conversations.

Bee spit- who knew! (Besides Google).

Lastly, we fondly refer to it as Harry Peter.

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Charlotte (has) Baby Brain's avatar

I knew that bees spit honey!! I'm so proud of myself for this, haha

Miss Ann sounds wonderful. There are no people in this world that I love more than people that take the time to engage with my children. It makes so much difference.

Loved this piece, as always. Your parenting reflections really hit me in the feels. I wish we lived in the same town so our children could be friends (my daughter also pours her water all over herself, so I think they'd get on well)

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