In the middle of things
I’m from the midwest, she said in answer to the question everyone asked when she found herself seated at a table like this. I’m so sorry, he laughed. You’re not […]
Category Archives: growing up midwestern
it happened just this way
My father’s house
Recently I had cause to spend a couple of nights in an old abandoned farmhouse, moving out decades worth of stored furniture. I was both relieved and disappointed that there […]
This unfinished turn around the sun
In California the winters are green and the summers are brown, the opposite of where we come from. It took some getting used to, like you being gone has taken […]
Shirt Tails of Christmas Past
One year my boyfriend told me he had to get his cousin a Christmas present and asked me to help him pick something out. I was truly so naive I […]
If there is a heaven
If there is a heaven, it’s searching through a crowd for someone you have been separated from, someone you can’t wait to see.
Goodbye, my dear
Clint Miller, who was once my husband for 19 years, and my friend even longer, has died.
The death of the Easter bunny
I’ve heard the saying ‘Give me a child before age 5, I’ll give you a Catholic forever’ and it’s true Catholicism has a certain stickiness, something I’ve personally attributed to […]
Bluegrass and the Random Wonderful
I tend to avoid crowds successfully enough that I forget how being in one can so easily restore my optimism. One of the best things about San Francisco is Hardly […]
I’m not your tomboy or your tiny dancer either.
The first person to call me a tomboy was Cathy Lidisky. “Me and Sandy are tomboys, aren’t we?” she said, as if sure of my agreement. We were in sixth […]
Memphis
As I entered the grocery store, wrapped in my thoughts, I heard a voice, shaky with age. “Can you help a brother out?” I had seen him as I […]
reliablyuncomfortable 