The Plastic Chairs “Grandma… am I dirty?” My six-year-old daughter, Amber, asked it in a small, careful voice. The kind of voice kids use when they already think they know […]
The first time I saw the cabin, I cried. And not in a good way. It was June of 1986. I was twenty-three years old. Thomas and I had been […]
The Suit My fiancée walked down the aisle wearing an oversized old men’s suit. Nobody knew she was going to do it. Not me. Not my family. And judging by […]
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 […]