I’m taking a class on Virginia Woolf. It’s a lecture series really, and my gods, the woman had a way with the English language. It’s easy to say someone’s prose is lovely or lilting, but it is another thing when a writer expresses the more mundane things in a way that fashions them spectacular. “She…
My Aunt Hannah used to pack my lunch in a full-size brown grocery bag with an extra banana, “just in case.” Hannah wore house dresses, smoked like a chimney, and now that I’m older, I suspect she might have washed her prescriptions down with the occasional “nip.” I don’t care. I’m not looking for a…
If I were eleven, I would smell like sweat and sunscreen. I would live in a neighborhood with a windy road and a hill so I could ride my bike, the blue one with the peeling sticker, and never get bored. My bike would have a broken kickstand. I’d have to lay it near the…
I am 1985 Allison Reynolds lost on the set of Mean Girls. Let’s preface this rant with the truth that I love my apartment. It houses my favorite office and is located in a gorgeous spot. I have no complaints. But if, as my kids like to say, someone grabbed me by the throat and…
We moved to Venice, CA, when we left the desert. On our second day in our new city, I saw a woman on a bike in the middle lane of traffic. She was probably in her sixties. One pant leg rolled to reveal blue and white striped knee socks, her curly gray hair secured in…
This boat sits in the marina by my home. I walk by three times a day with Jack. At night, the warm light within makes it special. A man sits at the small table inside and works on a large wooden boat model. Jack and I slow to glance over every evening. The man sits…
Balconies are interesting spaces. A front yard or a porch are also revealing, but balconies are small pops of individuality amid a sea of windowed vertical boxes. I can’t say I ever noticed what my neighbors were doing when I lived among the streets, but now that I’m in an apartment, I can’t seem to…
A couple of weeks ago, I was exiting the parking garage of my apartment. It was morning, and while I waited to pull forward, I glanced toward the promenade that encircles the marina. It was breezy, the mist seemingly waking up and rolling about too. A woman stood a few feet from me with a…
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,…
