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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Quiet Room
She read a brief passage in a small, clear voice that will live on in my memory. Fluent in sounding out words she didn’t know, she gleaned tones from everyday verbs that I’d never dreamed they possessed, and conferred a strange new life on faded old nouns, as one might draw a hidden thread of some brilliant color from an old rug.
May 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Small Animals
A few times a year, especially in spring, one of my cats clambers through the flap in the door carrying some fresh dilemma for me.
May 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Chicken Equation
To say that the Trump years have taken their toll on our already strained relationship would fall woefully short. It’s like a natural disaster has hit, and I have to keep updating my homeowner’s-insurance claim every time I find more damage.
May 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
After The Flood
When we went back outside, Tom had stopped sawing and was repotting the bare vine. “You never know,” he said. He’s right, of course. We don’t know what the world will bring, what power lies in a salvaged tomato plant, what we all do to build back, survive, thrive.
April 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Beat The Old Lady Out
I couldn’t see the loaves in her oven, but I could smell them. They smelled like the perfect weight of blankets on a winter night; like the loving and attentive parents I thought I deserved; like the solution to every natty problem that might crop up in life.
April 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Funeral For A Hamster
I was unable to protect my children from heartache. I couldn’t keep them from the pain of it. But I could ease their journey by helping them light their dead hamster’s funeral pyre.
April 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Mild Case
When did the distance from the bed to here become twenty-six miles? That pair of pants I stepped over, you see that? Goddamn Everest that was.
April 2021Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
To Make It Through
Some of us have faced devastating losses of jobs or homes or family members, and some of us have more time to take up hobbies and house projects. Some of us pop our trunks open, and some of us fill them.
April 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Precarious
“Imagine if we’d known,” I said. “If you’d had a diagnosis, you could have been given lithium or something to help you.” Joan lifted her hands to her face and sobbed.
March 2021
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Nesting
They take turns at the feeders, but if one lingers too long, the others — usually males — will jabber insults until the offender leaves. I have a secret nickname for the house sparrows: Little A-holes.
March 2021
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