This is too soon to write this. I should wait a few months, maybe a year, take time and coffee and dreams and let it finish whirling around my neural net. But Star Trek is all about the temporal anomalies so here I sit. One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my …
Category Archives: Family
Fossils
Sunday morning I packed one of those paper grocery bags with blood oranges from my backyard tree, a handful of shelled walnuts in a plastic baggie, a few cans of good ginger ale, a bag of homemade corn chips, a package of fig cookies, and I stuck it in the back of my van. I …
Rubicon
At the end of eighth grade, my homeroom teacher marched us into the cafeteria and handed out number two pencils. We sat at long bench tables covered in graffiti scratches and filled in circles on endless pieces of paper. Define the word “rubicon.” In the diagrammed sentence, which word is the verb? What is the …
Friday Morning, for Ada and Kevin
One January day during my third grade year, Mrs. Mackenzie marched us outside and lined us up against the cool brick wall facing the playground. A Polaroid camera hung from her neck, and one by one, she asked us to smile. Flash! Slide. Out popped a photograph, which she gave us to hold and shake …
Gypsy Moth
Twenty-three years ago my nemesis was a rail-thin woman named Mrs. Kyler. She lived in a New England sort of country ranch house, all whitewashed slats and decaying rose bushes surrounded by a sturdy picket fence. She lived there fifty of her ninety-one years she said, and she rented one small bedroom, the one nearest …
Beekeepers
The field behind my childhood home stretched for countless acres of tall pale grasses and hidden snake holes, all of them covered by swarms of honey bees. They landed on blue bachelor’s buttons and the delicate stalks of goldenrod that made my mother sneeze. The bees “belonged” to our next door neighbor, as if thousands …
Gateway
I think I met him ten million years ago, when I roamed feral trees as a split-winged dinosaur. I have flash memory of it, of a place lush and tired, waiting for sky-fallen disaster, a connection of eye against leathered skin. I met him again, twice, again, lifetime against my throat, my mind, my eyes, …
Cape Fear
Have you ever had a childhood memory of something so horrifying in the moment that you remember wishing you were cremated and tossed into the wind, never to have that experience again? But some miles and many years from the whole event, you find yourself wishing you were there one more time, having one more …
Yard Stick
Six years ago I made a trip to the midwest, and flew home from St. Louis in a plane chock full of vacation people. I sat next to a window over the wing, and watched the silver arch fade from view as we leaped into the clouds. My mind was tired, I remember this, and …
Vegetable Dreams
Little 7 walked into my bedroom this morning, rubbing his right eye. I scrutinized his swollen lid, decided it might be a bug bite, and groaned out of bed and into the kitchen to get a cucumber. Everyone knows that cukes reduce puffiness and pull toxins out of your eyes. I’ve seen countless magazine ads …