There was a time I wanted to meet each thing that happened—at a party, the next person who came through the door; the next great philosophical insight; the child who, being born, would reveal the deep truth of creation. I waited for forty years and nothing came. There was no white horse, no knight, … Continue reading Seek to Live a Quiet Life

‘Look, mom, I see a red bird!’ I tell her it’s a cardinal, but she only cares about the paint it leaves in her memory. It is one masterful stroke by an artist whose hands are more important than their name. ‘I heard Meowth!’ Her brother’s cat scowls from the street, a feral refusal for … Continue reading The Queen of Heaven

It's no secret that Mother's Day can be stressful for many people. For me, it was watching my mother-in-law, a woman who had a hand in raising me in my teen years and stayed by my side despite our very strange, yet functional-to-mental-illness relationship, deteriorate for nearly three years with ALS and then have two … Continue reading April showers bring May powers

What happened the day you named me? Were my cheeks olive and tired from resisting the light, chapped from an extra week spent in a womb tired of carrying babies for two years in a row? Were you defeated in your name choice, relinquishing your secret favorite in lieu of the name he picked? Or … Continue reading To my mother, the enigma

Age ten was the first time I thought about being forty—the age Oscar Wilde was when he was imprisoned and wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I assumed I would similarly have a long literary career by that time—though without the ball and chain. As age twenty came, then more and more children, that daydream … Continue reading For He Who Lives More Lives Than One…

I am 8, I am reading the dictionary, I have been through the American Medical Association book four times front-to-back. I read Wilde and Poe and understand light refraction. I dissect dead turtles and frogs. I measure the doppler effect of large farm trucks on the endless expanse of 1980s country roads. I write my … Continue reading Many Sparrows

Think back to a time when you were mocked for something you loved. Feel that pain. What did you do with it? Did you laugh it off, hide it, let shame ride into your being to the point you gave up part of yourself? Did you become the arbiter of someone else's humiliation in order … Continue reading Mercy in Our Words