The kind you’re born with, the kind you choose, the kind that teach Catholic school
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My eyes filled again. Filippo came by and murmured, “Think of the little light in your chest,” and somehow I understood him. I don’t know how. I let the light shine.
I snuggled closer to him to show my loyalty. See, I am your grandson. I belong to you. Placing my head lightly against his shoulder, I could smell the oil, the sweat, the Old Milwaukee.
The cataracts give her an otherworldly countenance, like a blind prophet who gazes more easily into the past than into the present. She is otherworldly, because she isn’t a part of this time where I dwell — not fully. She floats closer to us and then away again before we can grasp her.
The first time I saw Bak Hoo, she was peeing into a big Del Monte pineapple can in the basement. I froze on the cellar steps at the sight. Bak Hoo was my great-grandma.
They fished three tournaments together without breaking the top fifty before I told him to sign me up as his partner instead. At least I knew the difference between monofilament and fluorocarbon. I mean, damn.
But then I accidentally bite into one of the sour, acrid parts of quarantine. It’s easy to forget, when you live four hundred miles away, that your mother’s temper can be sparked by something as benign as family movie night or a run-in with the Hertz rental-car dealership.
One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking — a detour, error.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
When I need to think, I clean. I sort and organize. I give away scores of possessions. In my mind I repeat the word away, away, away. I need clear, open space before I can even begin to understand the latest problem I’ve conjured for myself.