The Bills by the Sugar Bowl My stepmother told me at her kitchen table in April. The bills were stacked by the sugar bowl. A neat pile, squared at the […]
The insult came before I’d even finished setting down the peach cobbler. I’d baked it at five that morning in the kitchen of the lake cabin we’d rented, and it […]
“Why did you do it?” I asked. She didn’t answer right away. She looked out the window over the sink, at the backyard, at the clothesline Grandma had used every […]
I work in oncology now. Fourth floor, St. Luke’s Hospital. The same floor where Grandma spent most of her last year. People ask me if it’s hard to work there. […]
The winter I was nine years old, an ice storm came across the Texas Hill Country and took down a quarter mile of our fence in one night. I remember […]
I built my first structure when I was nine years old. Not a real structure, not a building, but a design for one, drawn in pencil on graph paper I […]
The guest room finally smelled of nothing. That was the first thing I noticed when I pushed open the door that October morning. For six months it had smelled like […]
The day Steve and I found out I was pregnant, he laughed so hard he cried. We were standing in our kitchen at six in the morning, both of us […]
I discovered I was likely the father of five-year-old twin boys while standing on the cold marble floor of Terminal 4 at O’Hare International Airport, thirty-five minutes after cursing an […]
My daughter’s fingers caught the hem of my beach dress just as I was about to step off the wooden walkway, and the pressure was so gentle that I nearly […]