Blog : Beautiful-Things
The Boarding School Letters
| March 20, 2017 But consider for example the six-year-old daughter, face down on her new dorm bed, who cannot possibly imagine what to write to her mother a thousand miles away...
Holding Hands
| March 6, 2017 We walk up the stairway of my grandmother's porch. Towers of brick flank the stairs, which later we will scramble up to leap into the soft green grass below...
Dead Man Tim
| February 27, 2017 Tim's apartment was cleaned and all his belongings put out on a curb in the parking lot. This is the saddest part...
Yes, They've Met
| February 20, 2017 There's a 1/16 scale Texaco truck parked on our mantle, its frame crooked and stack bent from ways it's been stored. I dust it. Then, I dust my son's toolbox, an eighth-grade shop project etched with the name he's inherited from good stock. My husband's grandfather drove a Texaco truck...
Ice
| February 13, 2017 I'm nine months pregnant with my first child, and the snow in NYC has been beaten into submission. I've just come off a packed subway...
Seattle, After the Rain
| February 6, 2017 To the birds, we must look like ants at a picnic, the way we crawl from our dark caves and run crazed for sidewalks and grassy parks...
This is Where You'll Find Me
| January 30, 2017 New York City, after we lied then made rules. It shouldn't work by a long shot but it does....
Lines of Light
| January 23, 2017 At sunset in Burlington the power lines are golden like the afterglow of sparklers when children twirl them in the air. A frayed ribbon of sunlight stretches out...
What We Did with the Honey
| January 16, 2017 The day we learned you were gone, Howie says he knocked, nothing answered.
Parabolic
| January 9, 2017 His first summer married, my father tended chickens. His job was to chase the birds out of the tin coop on hot days...
Morning (repeat)
| January 2, 2017 When my infant daughter wakes at two in the morning and her father cannot coax her back to sleep...
White (repeat)
| December 26, 2016 We no longer remember the sound of birdsong or the feel of dry pavement beneath our feet, but we walk to school anyway because school is the place we're meant to walk to on Tuesday mornings. Temperatures register -23 below zero...
Grace (repeat)
| December 19, 2016 "Thank you," I tell the manager, "for taking my order so late." The sizzle of the grill frames my words. "I appreciate it."
Holding (repeat)
| December 12, 2016 My sister and I live on either side of sixty. We've been mothers half our lives. Visiting her in Oregon, Ashland running a steady hundred degrees for days into weeks, we head to Lake of the Woods...
Turkey Soup (repeat)
| December 5, 2016 On Thanksgiving, after the turkey is carved and gutted - after we slice through half of the twenty-pound bird my mother insists on ordering...
Birthday Cards
| November 28, 2016 Once, I wrote a birthday poem for her forty-second. It described her love of wine, and how she was so very fine. Exceedingly satisfied at the neat rhyme and my infinite untapped potential, I awaited glowing praise...
An Absence of Yellow
| November 21, 2016 It's mid-August and already my grandfather's pumpkins boast a bright orange. His cucumbers have laced thin vines up the patio rail. The tomatoes flush cherry-red in waves. My grandparents bribe me with vegetables to come for a visit...
Claudia
| November 14, 2016 She was only 15 and already had lost a leg to bone cancer. Our high school girls' Sunday school class had pondered this for a few weeks...
In the Fold
| November 7, 2016 She wields a basket of clean linen with easy confidence: one, two moves across the chest to make a towel into thirds...
Only Now
| October 31, 2016 Only now, as you stand center of an aisle carpeted royal blue, where you and your older sisters, styled by mother in hand-sewn dresses to match her own, once trailed like ducks down the narrow river...
Bike Ride
| October 24, 2016 I don't remember if I wrapped my hands around my father when he let me ride on the back of his yellow Schwinn....
Red Birds
| October 17, 2016 I hand the plate of raw vegetables to Dad. He sets it on the shelf attached to the grill, settles his arm around me. Pointing to the tree above, he says, "See those red birds?"
Bare, Naked
| October 3, 2016 Rain falls, dimpling puddles. I kick off my clogs. My toenails shine like sparkling pumpkin peel. I slide my underwear and jeans down my legs...
On Guilt
| September 26, 2016 When I was a baby and woke up at night, my mother held me, her arms a boat on a gentle sea. Oh, the helpless power of the small, to be thus cupped in the world's warm hand...
Water
| September 19, 2016 Many days I set a thermos of jasmine tea beside me on my desk. Jasmine tea is mostly water, perfumed by flowers. My thermos is stainless steel with metallic green paint and says L.L. Bean on one side...
When Students Cry
| September 12, 2016 I know I shouldn't hug them, but I can't seem to stop, though I'm sure HR would advise it. I'd like to stop their crying as well, but that's even less tractable. Like the girl last fall who came to my 8:00 class wearing loose shirts and, after arriving late one day, told me she was pregnant.
Mars and a Reflection of Mars
| September 5, 2016 "There are two red planets tonight," I say. And you reply, "What a brave universe". And I feel brave. Two 30-lb packs hang near the tent we pitched just before it got dark enough to need headlamps. It's Night One of this backpacking trip...
Don Isidro
| August 29, 2016 In the lean years after WWII, soda bottles were our treasure, the two to five cent refund mine and my brother's only income for anything beyond the necessities our parents provided.
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lines of light (1)
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