As the Southwest 737 climbed through the dull clouds and ragged hills of San Diego the Captain explained Air Traffic Control had advised him that the skies throughout our flight path in California today were “out of sorts,” much like the reluctant flyer I still think I am. Our ascent would prove bumpier than usual; […]
What you teach is teaching you
We go toward love still hating it
In my sleeping dream I am visiting my daughter in Seattle, although the city looks nothing like the real thing. Instead of a 19-century logging port today buzzing with construction fueled by a burgeoning high-tech industry, it is very old, its ancient buildings furry with moss, its cobblestone streets, cold, slick, and largely deserted. I […]
When lilacs last in the dooryard did their best to bloom
It all started with the lilacs, with leashing up my little dog and heading out into the cinematic glare of Denver’s bipolar weather on a manic, spring upswing to clear my head of a special relationship’s continuing, apparently unrelenting problems that seemed so threatening to him, and, well, me. Temperatures soaring in late April to […]
I don’t want to grow up, but …
Who you gonna call?
I was walking my dog and decided to check in with someone I regularly call whose approval I have secretly, unsuccessfully sought for decades. I interviewed her a while, reciting a rote script as disingenuous as the confession I used to make as a child. Inquiring about health and weather; movies seen, meals ingested. Until […]
Choose once again, and again …
I found a big black spider in my bathroom yesterday, hiding in plain view. It stood in freeze-frame against the eggshell-blue wall, like a prisoner making a break for it, suddenly caught in a roaming strobe-light beam. I sighed. After all, we’d talked about this. Not me and this particular spider, perhaps, but I’d definitely […]