Last night I was looking at some pictures of Mia from over the summer, and I came across one of her lying placidly next to Suzanna the Dog on an afghan my friend Cheryl’s mother made. Mia was staring over at the dog with a look that held the perfect combination of wonder and oblivion; … More A reflection that is so long it should count as two posts
-I thought losing a grandparent as an adult would be different from losing a grandparent as a child. I was 15 when my mother’s father died. I thought Nanny’s death would be easier somehow. But in the final analysis, adulthood is meaningless where this particular loss is concerned. The death of a grandparent reduces you to childhood regardless of … More Notes on a funeral
I was watching the tape that’s been in the video camera since Christmas day, and there’s a scene from my hospital room the day Mia was born that nearly makes me wet myself every time think about it. In the background music is playing–specifically, Joan Baez’s Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. There is a song … More Is it because we are from West Virginia?
I wonder if this is what Pompeii was like in the weeks and months after Vesuvius blew, ash and broken furniture littering the rooms where children played, friends laughed, where music and literature, science and mathematics drifted like smoke through the open doors and windows. There are no stone encrusted bodies here, clinging for dear life, no vacant-eyed … More Gone
Twenty years ago, on a clear blue day much like this one, I sat in a sunny social studies classroom at Central Junior High and stared raptly at a TV screen that mirrored the sky beyond the 10-foot windows just a few feet from my desk. I was ten years old, and my fellow 6th graders … More Looking skyward
Did you ever have one of those really nutty history teachers in high school–the kind who got just a little too excited about the subject matter, the kind who showed up the first day of the Civil War unit dressed as Abe Lincoln and stood and talked like Abe Lincoln all day long, the kind … More DUDE!
In a recent post I cited Sharon Stone and Ashley Judd as some of my heroes/reasons for living. I could tell you that I included them because they are drop dead gorgeous, because they are sophisticated and stylish, or because they break bad on screen every time they step in front of a camera, and … More Basic instinct
For those of you who thought the Homecoming field decoration was amusing, rest assured that I did as well. The most amusing part of all was that the “hand” giving the aforementioned finger was actually the wildcat (our mascot) paw that our athletic director had painstakingly painted the day before the big game. I didn’t … More Gimme a…finger!
It’s one in the afternoon on a Monday, and I am sitting at my kitchen table eating Beefaroni and White House apple sauce. Suddenly I’m in third grade again, and I’ve managed to convince my mom that I really needed to stay home from school. I am eating at my grandparents’ table listening to “All … More Hooky
I have shelf-top cabinets and vaulted ceilings in my kitchen. On the highest wall the space between the cabinet top and the ceiling’s surface seems vast and open, so shortly after I moved in I purchased two obscure members of the philodendron family to grace that lofty margin. They grew, not in viney tendrils like … More If you can read this….
one small corner of the universe 