Some people are self-motivators. They get up, look at their to-do lists, and actually do the things on them. These people can be very annoying. I know because I live with one. […]
Discipline: The Thrill of Routine
Texas, Oh Texas
–After “The Beautiful” by Michelle Tea Belly up, back down on scratch grass growing in cracked black soil, my childhood fingers slipped inside the cracked handles of the earth. High winds pushed […]
Mourning the Loss of a Woman I Should Never Have Met
Madiha was my step-mother-in-law—my husband’s father’s wife. My husband’s mother passed when he was 16, his sisters, much younger, needed care. Needed a mother. Madiha became my father-in-law’s second wife. Madiha passed […]
The Vacation Thief
For the first time since vacation planning in March, I was grateful rather than resentful we weren’t vacationing in Europe.
A Friend Indeed: The Importance of Being Valued
There are some people for whom the term friend means pretty much what it does on Facebook: someone with whom they have interacted in some (presumably) pleasant way. I am not one […]
How to Graduate from a Pandemic State of Mind
I am buying graduation decorations and stringing them up. A big “Congratulations” banner will hang across the window on the back porch. The new outdoor lights dipping down from the upstairs balcony […]
Thoughts About the Future
1. Will there be hummingbirds? 2. Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking in geological time, astronomical space. When humans die out on the planet we call Earth, what other species will be […]
Reopening Social Life: Making the Cut
Dear Fill in the Blank, I understand that you have dropped fifteen of your Facebook friends. I understand this because they have all been complaining to me. What did they do wrong? Was […]
What Our Dreams Can Mean
One of the most satisfying dreams I ever had was incredibly violent. I was a teenager in my dream, leading my friends through a maze-like neighborhood, while a group of bullies followed […]
Is It Okay to Drink and Read Anne Lamott?
It seemed a fair question to ask myself, since that’s exactly what I was doing. I don’t have a clear answer, possibly due to the drink. Lamott is famous for writing […]
