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White Knuckles
Clatterplunk. Every night we hear it above our heads: the rolling of the office chair as it’s pushed away from the desk, the thump of a plate being grabbed off the wooden desk, and the predictable punctuation of clatterplunk as a fork hits the floor. These sounds tell us something: the fifteen-year-old is on the move. Having eaten her dinner in
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Warm Fuzzies
When I was in 4th grade, my class went through a careful, deliberate, rigidly enforced process of loving each other. Such was the climate in the mid-1970s, an era when feeling groovy was a cultural mandate. At some point during 4th grade, our teacher, Mrs. Ring, talked to us about the notion that “sharing is love.” In
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Wherein My English Teacher Rightly Hangs Me Out to Dry
During sophomore year of high school, my English teacher was named Mrs. Rice. We can’t accuse Mrs. Rice of being overly fond of the redhead in the second row. As I review the work I did in her class, it is apparent that Mrs. Rice was a seasoned teacher. I wasn’t the first “Look at me,
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Dear God, I Love You
One of my first friendships was with a neighbor girl, Susan. When we were two years old, our mothers decided we should be friends. So we were. As we were coming up, we loved each other hard, yet we had terrible battles. A kid who was innately a people-pleaser, averse to conflict, I was always caught
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It Would Be a Few More Years Before I Learned About Parallelism
I’ve been sifting through boxes of memories — the accumulated papers from my youth. As I grab each handful of faded pages, drunken journal entries, glowing fourth grade report cards, conflicting judges’ sheets from speech meets, crude first grade drawings, crazily folded letters, I am pulling more than paper onto my lap. Each handful takes
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I Tried to Get Pinteresty and Ended up Drinking a Box of Wine
Listen, I didn’t drink all three liters in one sitting. The last thing I’m in the mood for is wiping vomit off the hardwood. (Note to self: make Pinterest vision board of photogenic approaches to mopping up half-digested ravioli) Trust me, I did pace myself with that box of wine, never downing more ounces than
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Salt on the Road
Grey sky hangs low, a cinder block compressing the horizon. Lifeless, yawning fields spread to the left; decaying tillage muddles the acres on the right. The car flits past a “Did You Know? My Heart Beat 18 Days from Conception” billboard, then another, this one taking the tack of “My Doc Says I Could Smile Before
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Found My Marbles
That damn marble. For the past couple of years, every time I’ve swept the kitchen floor–so, like, five times–I’ve dislodged that damn marble from its hiding place under the radiator. After warming up with gentle strokes around the stove, near the fridge, over by the bathroom, I close in on the radiator. It’s time to get real.
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I’ll Tell You Why I’m Crying
I’m crying. I’m crying because I’m running. I’m crying because I’m running because my right eye weeps whenever the slightest breeze blows against it. I’m crying because I’m running because my right eye weeps whenever the slightest breeze blows against it because the tear duct is apparently clogged. I’m crying because I’m running because my
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13
He comes home from school and tells me, “My legs have been hurting again. I must be growing.” We measure him. He’s sprouted a quarter inch in the past three weeks. At just over 5’6″, the kid is taller than I am. ** We park by the garage. Allegra’s door flies open, and she skitters
