I was thirty-three weeks pregnant with twins when the contractions started — sharp, sudden, and far too close together. It was a Sunday morning in Phoenix, and the heat outside […]
The house still smelled like my mother eight months after we buried her. Lavender in the linen closet, where she kept little cloth bags of it tucked between the towels. […]
On my last shift at St. Mary’s Hospital, a man coded in Room 412 at 3:14 in the morning. He was seventy-one. A retired mailman named Gus. He’d come in […]
You’ll Manage At 6:30 on a Friday evening, my doorbell rang. I was in my robe. I had a bowl of tomato soup cooling on the counter and a crossword […]
The first office Northstar ever had was above a taco shop on East Cesar Chavez Street in Austin, Texas. You had to go up a narrow set of outdoor metal […]
The first time I met my mother-in-law, I heard her say it through a bathroom door. It was the night David introduced me to his parents. Fifteen years ago. A […]
My father leaned toward my mother at my college graduation, looked straight at my wrinkled gown, and whispered, “We’re finally done wasting money on this failure.” He didn’t think I […]
“You could simply sign the authorization and avoid embarrassing the family.” My mother said it across my office desk at Cedar Run Ranch in eastern Oklahoma, the same way she […]
The motorcycle came up the gravel road just as the officiant said, “If anyone here has a reason these two should not be married…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He […]
The summer I was seventeen, I painted the lake every single morning. It was called Lake Milton, and it sat at the bottom of a long gravel road outside our […]