What Ethan Knew The routine never changed. I want to be clear about that first, because the routine is the reason I was standing on the front porch at 3:47 […]
My twin sister Elise and I were born eleven minutes apart, and for thirty-four years those eleven minutes had been, in our mother’s accounting, the most significant thing about us. […]
The Sunday Motorcycle I want to start with what the motorcycle actually was, because nothing that happened afterward makes sense without it. My father, Edwin Carl Merritt, bought the 1952 […]
Ordinary Life My grandfather taught me three things about money. The first was that it is a tool, not a destination, and that confusing the two is the beginning of […]
My mother-in-law dumped a bowl of ice water over my head at my own wedding reception, in front of two hundred and fifty guests, and said, “Oops. The help should […]
My mother called me the night before my wedding to tell me she had changed her mind about coming. I was sitting on the edge of the hotel bed with […]
At thirty years old, I had somehow become the one thing my entire family could agree on. Not because they loved me, though I suppose in their own broken way […]
What Margaret Knew The coffee was still hot when my son told me he wasn’t moving the truck. I want to start there, with the coffee, because it is the […]
My daughter asked me to walk her down the aisle. When I arrived at the venue in my dress uniform, her future mother-in-law took one look at me and said, […]
My daughter-in-law unwrapped her gift at Christmas dinner and held up the apron with both hands, turning it so everyone at the table could see the embroidered text, and then […]