I peed on my sister’s head, and she saved my life. In 1974 I was a ragamuffin four-year-old with unkempt mousy brown hair who wore the same outfit most days: patched polyester faux-denim bellbottoms and a Strawberry Shortcake blouse. My sister Mardi was two years...
It starts with a snake, gliding through sun burnt grass in the warmth of an August afternoon. Puck lunges, and eighty pounds of dog launch into motion on one end of a leash. Force = Mass x Acceleration = Me jolted out of my daydream on the other end of that leash. My...
“Is Maith An Scéalaí An Aimsir.” “Time is a good storyteller.” -Irish Proverb I watched in fascination as Mirai Enog engaged in a tug of war with her last breath, a horrible wheezing sound accompanying the two of us. The stubborn woman she was, she refused to concede...
Sedona booked the ticket to Santa Barbara on a Tuesday. Denver was cold that morning, the kind of cold that didn’t just sit on the skin but seemed to move through her bones, settling in the places where sadness had already made a home. Outside her apartment window,...
I’ve decided to stop calling my father, “Dad.” At least when I talk to my siblings. “Dad” is suffused with affection and a nod to the role of parenting, a role he abdicated years ago if ever he inhabited it. Instead, I’m calling him “Denis.” That’s his name. I could...