For fourteen years, this dog has witnessed every word I’ve written or struggled to write. When Cynthia Newberry Martin invited me to write about one of my days on her blog, Catching Days, Chloe guided me one last time, this time with her absence. I share it here in her honor. To read, click here.
What Nadia Wanted
Her name was not Nadia which means hope or desire. She was named for a mythical bird whose feet never touch the ground. Her privacy is important, though, so Nadia it is and, like her given name, it fits her. She did hope. She did desire. And her feet never touched the ground for the entire hour I knew her. … Read More
One Thing
“He never knew when it was coming.” I learned last week that there is one thing about me my husband would change if he could. Not the size of my breasts. Not my inability to control myself around a bag of corn chips. Not the way I start reading his library books before he is finished with them, or try … Read More
Life Happens
“It was amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.” (Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye) If things had been going according to plan, I’d be writing this post from Switzerland, on the last leg of a three-week trip that was to begin with a flight … Read More
Monday Letters
It’s five o’clock on Monday morning and my mother sits in bed, knees up, a pad against her thighs, her second cup of coffee steaming within easy reach. Her pen flies across the page in front of her leaving behind a trail of thoughts that have been on her mind for days, minutes, or take shape as she writes. I … Read More
To Love, Anniversaries, and Burps in the Night
On February 2, 2012 my husband and I hung side by side at the start of the zip line at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The feeling I had at that moment steals back as I write these words. Pure terror. Pure bliss. The inching forward until the moment arrives in a rush. The platform seems to fall away … Read More
Intervention
I don’t know what kind of bird this is, I don’t know its sex. All I know is that for five days it occupied my backyard, walking around among my herb pots with a bemused air, as if hoping any minute to find a familiar face or landmark. There was no visible injury, no reason that I could see that … Read More
Love, A La Mode
When I moved from the East Coast to San Diego in the spring of 2002, I found myself a stranger in a place that felt like home. There is no explaining that kind of feeling, it just happens. It happens more easily when you land in a community of loving, welcoming people who begin as acquaintances and become friends. Some … Read More
Drinking Lessons
The distiller and I are sitting across from each other in the swelter of a Denver June afternoon, three tiny unlabeled bottles of bourbon lined up before us. He pours from one into a scratched goblet that will serve as a snifter, lifts it to his nose, and then offers it to me like a teacher holding out a piece … Read More
Reconstruction Day
On Good Friday last year, my step-daughter checked into the hospital for the second phase of post-mastectomy reconstruction. As we packed to go help her through the recovery, I found myself pondering the word, “reconstruction” as if I’d never heard it before. Reconstruction is what people do after tsunamis, floods, fires, and wars. Builders in New York and New Jersey can’t … Read More
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