Bento Box Stories #4

Visible and invisible scars — I was suspicious when the nurse started the Baby Animals in the Wild video in the waiting room. I watched lion babies wrestle in the tall grass. I had just completed my first mammogram. You have little white spots on your pictures, the nurse explained. I needed to wait until…

Five things I am learning while reading David Copperfield — One of my first medium stories bombed. I assumed it would be funny to have Charles Dickens offer writing advice with a cockney accent. That story was too obscure and time-consuming for readers — who had to decode it — and poorly titled. A handful of people graciously read it…

Today is my favorite Valentines’ Day ever. That’s not because of flowers, chocolates, or poetic cards, or that I am falling in love or turning Hallmark cheesy as I age. I am celebrating my brother-in-law, Tom’s, new heart. Tom has received numerous cardiac treatments due to valve and artery issues…

When even Hemingway stories don’t help — My brain MRI was scheduled for Monday. On that Sunday, I drove to my office at the psych hospital, thinking paperwork might distract me from uneasy feelings. The weather was slightly windy when I first drove across Lake Washington on the floating bridge. Hours later, my return drive was more…

When rosemary cuttings are better than romance — We moved from the Ted Bundy motel into a rental house. Life felt almost sane, with one exception. My girlfriend and I were still drinking way too much as if we had dragged the SF bar scene along with us. We drank until we finally reached our breaking points. My…

And other essential life and cancer lessons reluctantly learned — I froze. There was no time to duck. An owl swooped down as if it were aiming for my head, then — at the last minute — lifted into the higher branches of a cedar tree. Every evening after that, to no avail, I looked for the owl in the…

I often see him if I walk the route above the lake. He wears one outfit, regardless of the weather — running shorts, a long sleeve shirt, and a hooded rain jacket. He seems to be all limbs — long, thin arms and legs — with no torso. The deer…

And the After Mess — I made a radical shift from being the yuppie wife of a promising, brilliant professor to moving to San Francisco to live with my girlfriend She and I had been friends for years. The whole shift took place over two months. If I hadn’t been so repressed by my strict…