Hitching a ride, trusting a partner, marrying the same person three times
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The Sumner Press, the weekly paper from my hometown in southeastern Illinois, continues to arrive in my mailbox in Ohio even though I’m not a subscriber. A few years ago, when my wife and I were the grand marshals for the Sumner fall-festival parade, the publisher gave us a complimentary one-year subscription. The subscription has run out, but the paper keeps coming, as if a higher power has decided I need it in my life.
Jessica and I periodically take walks together. Her small dog, Ortiz, sometimes joins us. He spends his days eating shoes, peeing on the carpet, and jumping the backyard fence. But no matter where we go, I notice that he always knows the way home.
Suddenly you have a crisis: You’re tired of parenting. You’ve had it with this kid. You would give her back, but there’s no one to give her to. It’s too humiliating to offer her up for adoption. I am a fucking awful parent, you think. And you are a fucking awful parent. Join the club. There are about 150 million of us in the U.S.A. at the moment.
Heavy, wet snow all morning, then by noon / the clouds wrung dry, whipped away, / the sky so brilliant after the viewing / and graveside service for our youngest
He stops short, horrified that he has interrupted his employer during an emotional moment. Bishop quickly wipes away her tears and says, in Portuguese, Don’t worry, José. I’m only crying in English.
Watching my wife, I have finally found the key to the map. I understand why men have spent millennia constructing systems to strip the power from this body: Look how she pulls her spine up to the sky. Look how effortlessly she strings herself between the ordinary and the divine.
Our grandmother’s pillow, more than anything else, smelled like her. Her scent was talcum powder and lavender and rosary beads and butter and rectitude.
Hitler could only make angry arguments. Trump, too, can’t make an appeal to reason. All he can do is push the anger button and throw abuse at people. In a sense, he is just lucky that the one thing he can do is something that resonates with a certain segment of the population.
[History] rushes on, as it always did, with two forces racing toward the future, one splendidly uniformed, the other ragged but inspired.