Mom got the first inkling of Parkinson’s when she fell into the flower garden for no reason back in the summer of 2003. It turned out there was a reason but the knowing of reason took a long time — well over a decade — […]
All posts filed under: creative nonfiction
Traveling at the Speed of Light
I didn’t know if we could jam 10 helium balloons into my little Mazda but we did, along with all the other makings of an 86th birthday celebration for my mother. We drove up to the entrance of the Inn where my mother had a […]
Holding Your Seat
I hear shouting coming from inside the courtroom then a girl bangs through the doors with the bailiff striding after her. She’s furious. “I told him I didn’t know my phone was on, but he wouldn’t listen!” I’m sitting on a bench outside the courtroom […]
Cat or Dog?
Growing up, we were a cat family. This didn’t work out well for my younger brother, John, who was a dog person through and through. He solved the problem by simply pretending Winklemeyer was a dog. He never once let up on the claim. Much […]
What We Think We See
From a half a block away, I saw them gesturing back and forth to each other, she posed in front of Stephen King’s house, he with a camera in his hand. Something wasn’t sitting well. As I got closer, I heard raised voices. Was this […]
Recognizing Lovely
We all want to feel alive and feel the vitality of life coursing through us but lately my hands have made me aware of the very opposite, aware of vitality slipping away. Lately, these hands have become a big problem in my life. I’ve got […]
The Long Walk Home. Stories From the Road
I was still a few miles from home when out of the blue and for no predictable reason I hit the wall. My energy was instantly gone like someone had siphoned all the gas out of my tank while I was looking the other way. […]
The Theology of Thank You
During a leadership team meeting at an earlier time in my life, we’d been asked to go around the table and offer observations about where each of our colleagues could improve. It felt like a set-up of some sort so consequently I felt myself becoming […]
Thin Places
I’d been trying to write a story about a close friend who had died, reaching for something beyond my grasp with only puny words to get me there. What I was trying to capture was the way the first annual camping trip to Baxter without […]
Everywhere
“Hey, there’s a sunset,” Gail says. No one was expecting this. We’d spent the last few hours of the afternoon with rain dropping pleasantly on the screen house tent, water spattering our arms through the netting. When it came time to cook dinner we’d all […]
Getting Schooled
Putting the house to order before work, I pick up the packaging tape dispenser left on the dining room table and notice the tape has slipped out from the slot it threads through. Oh yeah. That’s why I didn’t put it away. It happens all […]
The Awe of Transformation
For over a year I watched a house by the golf course go through a head-to-toe upgrade. It was already a cute house on a corner lot in a quiet part of town but by the time the owners artfully staged two pairs of crocks […]
Be cool. 