The late Kathleen Dowling Singh—hospice worker, psychotherapist, and author—once spoke of an altercation she’d observed while flying to a conference. A man had reclined his seat so far that he was nearly lying in the lap of the woman behind him. The woman asked him to sit up straighter; when he refused, she started kicking …
Soon after I moved to this area, I watched a local schoolteacher perform a rap geology lesson about the glaciers that formed this valley. “Ice, ice, baby!” he intoned as he threw down his moves. That joyful, tongue-in-cheek teaching shaped my relationship to this landscape. When I looked out my office window, it was the …
We moved last week. Unlike the moves of young adulthood—a carload of boxed clothes, records and books—this was an epic engagement. Cleaning was a monumental task, undertaken with lots of help. Saying goodbye to the land was painfully dislocating. But what really killed me was sorting through boxes. We moved a lot when I was …
This time next week I’ll be on my way to my brother’s memorial service. In the back of the car—provided that the U.S. border folks approve—will be some precious family items. Precious, in that my ancestors cared for these things, and handed them on; and precious, in that they will be gifts for my brother’s …
In her short and remarkable life, the musician Eva Cassidy recorded some rollicking versions of old standards. In my favorite, “How Can I Keep From Singing?,” she positively belts out the chorus: “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to this rock I’m clinging; if Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can …
Several years ago, a young and lusty robin showed up outside our bedroom windows. It made its presence known by flying at the windows, hard. It did this over and over and over, starting about 5 am. It was, we assume, attacking the young and lusty robin it saw in the mirrored window so as …
My great-nieces introduced me to the phrase “cheese tax.” I thought they were referring to the duty paid when importing dairy products, but it quickly became clear that they were talking about dogs. “Cheese tax” is that variable percentage of human food offered as canine appeasement. Faced with the doleful, bottomless stare of a dog, …
When I was a kid, we lived within blocks of two different libraries. The city library was an imposing edifice of stone and stained glass and silence; the county library a big, well-lit room in the redbrick county office building. While its architecture was uninspiring, that county library was a treasure trove, a warren of …
Many years ago, I had an old Volvo named Goldy who had an unfortunate tendency to stop dead in her tracks for no discernible reason. We had just moved to a new city. I needed a desk, and had found one for sale, way out in the sticks. On my way there, traveling along a …
Her daughter had terminal cancer. “I’m grieving,” she said. Then she said, “I’m also savoring.” There are a lot of conversations about grief and loss lately. The child losing her struggle with mental illness; the limp suddenly revealed as bone cancer; the partner just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. These are personal places of powerlessness and sorrow: …
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