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: essay
“We were wrong for hours, sometimes even days…”
Can you imagine? Being wrong for hours, sometimes even days was life before the internet and our ability to pull Wikipedia out of our pocket. Before portable computers and our instant ability to resolve factual disputes, writer Ben Tarnoff points out in a New Yorker […]
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 […]
Three Good Things
I’m writing this while under the influence of a meager five hours of sleep which means I am seriously under-resourced. (Not my fault; I gave a full 8-hour allotment my best shot.) Five hours may sound like a bonanza of sleep for some* but at […]
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. […]
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 […]
Riding the Horse
Are you the person you were a year ago? Did you mean to be different? It’s actually strange to think of who we were one year ago and in what ways we may or may not have changed, either by happenstance or by design. I […]
Be cool. 