Blog : Beautiful-Things
On Belay
| April 16, 2018 When I climb, my husband catches me. Peter is younger than me, lankier, quieter. His body weaves up rock with a grace my shaky, short frame cannot yet settle into--but he's learned not to correct or coach me. Instead he holds me on belay...
Learning to Tell Time
| April 9, 2018 Learning to Tell Time Corpus Christi, Texas: February 1, 1969 It will always be eighty degrees in Corpus and I will always be six when the telegram comes. For me, this day will always have passed as if it were any other. I will always be inside...
Idols
| April 2, 2018 In September, they carry Ganesha to the river. The bedazzled elephant god sits Sukhasana, mala of flowers around his neck, unlikely to swim. My inherited religion is about a man who rose from the dead, his bloody corpse the symbol...
Reunion Tour
| March 26, 2018 Thud of drums, The Edge’s guitar lick reverberating in our sternums, and the first flinty sound of Bono’s voice. We never expected...
Controlled Burn
| March 19, 2018 Spring is the season for burning on the plains. Ranchers across the tall grass prairies of Eastern Kansas watch the forecast for the stillest days, when wind nests between mountains, before they bring the driptorches to the fields.
Pop-Pop
| March 12, 2018 If I put my ear to the hardwood, will I hear the shuffle of his steps? The velcro shoes? I never saw him with his socks off. I imagine his toes like his fingers: thin with long thick yellowing nails. "To grab things with," he told me...
Passenger
| March 5, 2018 I nest, my sleeping bag encircling me as I sit, skin-hot down sheltering this present happiness as if it were a round, warm egg. Clouds have erased the peaks beyond the harbor, and I feel the boat that formed my bed tugging at its lines...
Non-Transferable
| February 26, 2018 The instant I pull into the gas station, he starts screaming, starts pummeling the back of my seat with his gray and green Velcro sneakers....
Afterglow
| February 12, 2018 By morning, feathers had settled lightly in the corners of the bathroom. They swept up into the air, though, as I moved past. Down, up and down. One brushed the nape of my neck as I stepped from the shower, and clamped there to damp skin. A torn comforter; a small domestic catastrophe....
Little Traveling Altars
| February 5, 2018 I am calling my current situation 'vow of poverty' because that sounds much nobler than 'slumming' or 'lazy.' Vow of poverty helps me remember that the reason I will eat chickpeas for dinner for the next three nights is because there is a larger goal at hand....
Cooking for Grandpa
| January 29, 2018 Grandpa slumps on the three-legged stool, his clouded brown eyes intent on me as I reach into a cabinet drawer to scoop flour for dredging pieces of chicken soaking in a bowl of buttermilk....
Afghan Roses
| January 22, 2018 In Massoud's Circle, weathered plastic shopping bags are captured by the thorns of Afghan roses. Armored vehicles crisscross in formation. Liberators with their guns pointed bully civilian cars to halt. My convoy breezes by, failing to free the bags from their thorny prison....
Living With Ian
| January 15, 2018 My brother Ian and I live in the Pacific Northwest. We have a small brick house with wooden floors and a wall of French windows, letting in plenty of light....
Ripple (repeat)
| January 8, 2018 On a rusted railroad bridge overlooking Ohio's Rocky River, I stand with my father beneath an ocean blue sky and listen to the water's murmur. My father removes his glasses and points to a large rock beside the lower bank...
The Day to Day
| December 31, 2017 Sifting the flour. Squeezing the lever once. And then waiting. For a moment, it is winter again. I take my finger and make snow angels in the little blue bowl.
Wake Up
| December 25, 2017 I cannot take my children hiking without them mentioning babcia and dziadek and how they like to hike. Did you know they are going to take me camping one day? they say. Our children have seen their grandmother for the last time although she is still alive in a living room in Queens.
Sometimes Life Is Like That
| December 18, 2017 One morning I was riding my bicycle to work in a low drizzle, and the skies opened. I was going down a hill--water streaming in my eyes, raindrops pelting my arms and face, a nonstop stream of kick-up soaking my legs--when I saw it.
How to Envy
| December 11, 2017 In Cartagena de Indias, men walk down the streets carrying birdcages instead of briefcases, always with the same yellow waif perched precariously behind bars. It's important for the bird to see the world, one man tells me, his birdcage propped on the seawall, the sea crashing against the rocks a few feet away....
Oranges
| December 4, 2017 It is a rare occasion, but I decide to eat an orange when I want to remember....
In-Betweens
| November 27, 2017 A tiny green lizard clings to a brick outside the window. It takes in the late-morning light, attempting to combat the smooth chill in the air. I watch people filtering in and out of the restaurant wearing sweaters too thick for early September in Georgia.Â
Pigeon Prayer
| November 20, 2017 Whether to call them pigeons or doves is a matter of perspective. We humans made them all one family, then deemed the white ones symbols of peace and purity, while the grey took their place in tales of plague and war....
Paris Street; Rainy Day
| November 13, 2017 Back then, a woman of 17 could marry a man of 37 and the men would say, good for you, old chum, what a waist she's got, and the women would say, good for you, lucky duck, what lovely diamonds.
Lick Creek
| November 6, 2017 My niece Charli, eight years old, is crouched in the creek, peering into the sunlit shallows, her face and arms and loose gold curls spangled with light. Around her, the shaggy green woods are alive and trembling...
Soft Spot
| October 30, 2017 A few weeks into my second son's infancy, I've noticed that when the lighting and angle are perfect, I can see his pulse on top of his head, at the place where the bones haven't yet fused....
Signs
| October 23, 2017 In the final week of my mother's life, a duck and her ducklings traveled by her bedroom window in a wobbly caravan, declining in number with each daily pass. (The cats, I suspect: ruthless.)...
Did You Notice Me?
| October 16, 2017 Aunt Beverly was not my aunt at all. She was the family hairdresser and a friend of my mother's. She believed in God, but her allegiance was firstly to those around her...
Mentor of Cool
| October 9, 2017 There were Beatniks and wannabes like me in 1959 Portland coffeehouses. We sipped espressos and listened to cool jazz, whatever that was. Too young and inexperienced to distinguish authentic from pretentious, I tried, impossibly, to be cool.
The Lesson
| October 2, 2017 Only after the starter gun's snap, did my father burst from the port-a-potty...
Grateful
| September 25, 2017 My boyfriend's Grandad is ninety-one. I met him after dementia had wrested his control of the family business and emptied his mind of vocabulary...
