After raising 5 kids and packing them off to college, my cousin Karen cut her hair, threw a few things in a backpack and trekked around Europe for a while on her own. I was floored. No make-up? No blow dryer? That someone could travel […]
All posts filed under: creative nonfiction
Our primal relationship with numbers
Judging from how many articles there are out there with headlines like, “The 8 Top Anti-Inflammatory Foods for Anxiety” and, “The Only 5 Things You Need to Live a Good Life,” we appear to be in love with numbers. We just are. In fact, they […]
Respectable you
I went to work on Monday, March 16th. About 2 o’clock that afternoon my manager called to say it’s happening; pack up your laptop and go home. In the span of about a minute I became an instant remote employee along with many other people. […]
What’s really going on in our mind
I have bipolar. However, what I’m really having a harder time reconciling about myself is being one of those people with bad allergies. Honestly, I just finished coughing my way through the last 8 weeks because I wasn’t going to be a person with allergies […]
Unleashed
There is something in us that comes out when the environment changes, like that funny thing that always happened in school when the power went off. Under cover of darkness, mild mayhem would erupt. We would all start ooooohing and shouting. Excited tusseling would break out. It was like […]
Be cool
She fell a little too much in love with me so I had to dump her, but it could just as easily have been me falling in love with her. This story is about what it takes for us to do what we do. Oh […]
Leaving your mark
There is a lady who walks her dog on State Street in Portland every day. When she gets to Mercy Hospital, she takes a little detour so she can place a painted rock on the hospital’s front entrance steps or the guardrail going down to […]
Crazy loops
I’ve walked under the branches of this tree on my walk for the last 12 years, but it wasn’t until just a few days before the new year that I noticed the loop in that low-hanging one. The way it took that sudden bend up […]
The problem with bragging
I embarrassed myself in a meeting the other day having, once again, found the opportunity to brag about my sister who is a doctor in a high-level position at Mayo Clinic. (The Mayo Clinic.) I’m very proud of her. And I’m also clearly not above […]
The Great Balloon Escape
One of life’s big existential mysteries grabs up a 3-year-old, his middle-aged grandmother and a random old guy walking by. We drove up under the canopy of the retirement community, opened the trunk and the passenger side door and grabbed the first load of birthday […]
