(Or, how I escaped government work and became free as the breeze)
Sweltering day on the Oklahoma/Texas border, bridge job, late 1950’s. Hot and humid, maybe 105 degrees, It was the kind of day where you could lose eight pounds, …
Memory does not remember much of this day, forty-five years ago when a recent college graduate made his way from North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. But we know that his trip involved a young girl he had met the previous …
“You know, mom, you can’t be a writer and have a good garden. You have to make a choice,” my eleven-year-old son said. At the time, we were walking together through Hidcote Garden, a magnificent Arts and Crafts garden in …
Midmorning on a summer Sunday in 1987. The smell of mown grass and auto exhaust, the asphalt soft underfoot, warmed by the sun. Signifiers of home for me.
Woodward Avenue, an eight-lane racetrack connecting downtown Detroit to its northern suburbs, …
“I can still see your face, Mom” are words to you from my daily morning work-day prayers. They are sort of a chant, sung in an almost-whisper inside my head. (On those mornings when my husband has left for work …
It didn’t matter that he was my father. I didn’t like him much.
My father, his parents, and all his siblings were born in England. None of them had a sense of humor. It might have helped.
Dad was the …
Whenever a recipe calls for bay leaves, I can’t help but think of Irena. From the simmering warmth of my winter kitchen, I’m transported to the Adriatic in high summer.
You see, I have them still, the bay leaves she …
What if I hadn’t drifted over to Melbourne on a whim, to hook up with Jim, that permaculture expert I snogged at a random party, on a random evening, in an as yet ungentrified area of London way back in …
Like too many fathers across the globe I only get to see my daughter every second weekend. Out of 336 hours, I get 30. Before, as a stay at home dad, I saw my daughter every day. I got her …
I remember being in the indoor public swimming pool at the local gym club when the strangest thing happened to me.
There was myself and about 15 other people in the pool on that Saturday morning. I was there by …