The phone rang four times before my son answered. His voice came through flat and annoyed, as if I had interrupted something important. In the background I could hear music, […]
The recipe box is a green tin one with a hinged lid that does not close all the way anymore, and for four years it sat in the middle of […]
I am seventy-one years old and I have a flip phone in a drawer that I miss every single day. My granddaughter Mara talked me into the smart one. She […]
The drought broke me before it broke the wheat. I want to start there, because most people who knew me back then would have said it the other way around. […]
For nineteen days my brother Thaddeus would not say my name. Not once. He would say “she” and he would say “your sister” and he would say “whoever decided that,” […]
The first time I caught my mother stealing, she was seventy-one years old, and she was stealing from herself. I want to tell you what I mean by that, because […]
The first time Royce Tillman called me sweet, I should have counted my fingers after he let go of my hand. He came into Hapgood Feed and Seed on a […]
The first time Odette Marchetti made me feel small, she did it with a smile and a pair of reading glasses she did not need. I was sixty-one years old […]
For forty-one years I cut hair in the front room of my house on Sorrel Street, in a town in central Nebraska so small the welcome sign and the goodbye […]
I am seventy-one years old, and until this past spring I believed I had reached the age where nothing new could happen to me. I want to tell you how […]