When I asked my parents for the car to go to the library with Lisa, I was sixteen years old and had been driving for only a few months. They had no reason to doubt me. I was never in …
In early November of 2019, my oldest child told me he had found out in a Google search that his biological mother had died in 2015. An adopted son, he had met his biological mother when he was eighteen—they sat …
We were excited. John and Laura, our first friends here in our new hometown invited us to take a drive to see land they owned outside Idaho City, and we were going by ourselves. We argued over what time to …
It’s 8:00 at night and I’m dreading the time. Rusty, my two-year-old French bulldog, is fast asleep in his bed under the coffee table. His blissful slumber is interrupted by me turning him on his stomach and urging him to …
I had a strange awareness this morning, early before the day was much of anything that it would be. But it has stayed with me for hours, a poem trying to find its words, its directions to my mind, to …
Why does everyone keep saying that children don’t come with an instruction manual? Sure they do. I use one all the time.
I can never have children of my own — my lazy sperm made sure of that. However, since …
Our perception of what constitutes a ‘real man’ is constantly evolving. There was a time when the western hero was the paragon. A strong, brave and pure loner of unbending conviction who protected the abused and downtrodden.
Today, the …
It’s mid-afternoon and off in the kitchen I hear the play-by play of a Giants baseball game coming from the bake-lite radio on the counter near the stove and the faint roar of the crowd when the Giants get on …
My son broke my heart today. I have kids, four of them to be exact. They range in age from four to nine and I have to say that they are some of the greatest kids I’ve ever met, but …
A flimsy wall of sanitized white cloth defines the narrow space, pretending to offer privacy. I peer around it at my grandmother, framed in the hospital bed. I grab at the wall suspended from its sterile alloy track in the …