Thirty years ago, on January 9th of this year, I thought I had plenty of time to get the car washed. It was an important day, and I wanted a clean car, but we all know time stops at the car wash, and I was nearly late for my wedding. Michael, who should have gotten the…
How much more life will I live before it’s time to change the head on my electric toothbrush again? Time is visceral these days. I’m parsing out my life in an effort to make a day, a month, a year meaningful. Life-affirming. I like to think things are not just slipping by for me. No.…
My mom moved us from New York to Arizona the summer I turned eleven. When the plane landed, and 105 degrees of hell hit my face, I vowed to leave the state as soon as I was an adult and could make my own life. I left for college at eighteen and lived in Arizona…
“Focus on small things like making tea. Be grateful and break things down to the tiniest piece until you can find good.” That was my response when my youngest, distraught by news and the world, asked me the point of life. Not an easy question at any age, but she wanted to know how I…
If I were turning ten at the end of the month, this would be about stickers. It would be short and sweet because I neither loved to read nor kept a journal when I was ten. I was a talker at ten. If I were turning twenty at the end of the month, this would…
I watched a show on Netflix that took place in Philadelphia. The woman was on a bus, and she pulled the cord to alert the driver to her stop. I remember doing that, knowing that. I didn’t take the bus a lot growing up. I don’t ride the bus now, but I know about the…
Jack and I are trying to walk twice a day. His trainer says he needs two sixty-minute sessions to deal with his anxiety over living in a new city or a city at all. The vast expanse of the desert is all Jack has ever known, so he is learning there are other people, dogs,…
What do you consider your greatest achievement? I have used pieces of Marcel Proust’s Questionnaire to help with fictional character development. But, since I am on a break from my current love story-in-progress and I’m already tired of writing about cancer, I thought I might turn some of Proust’s questions on myself. Quick cancer update:…
When did we start pushing buttons on every corner? Maybe some titled agency conducted a study that determined people waste point-however-many-minutes waiting for traffic lights to change. That those minutes equaled point-point-lost-dollars in revenues. It is possible a think-tank or non-profit group decided something had to be done about the anxiety-inducing wait. Whatever the reason,…
