Personal Essay

The kindness of strangers saved the day — Our family loves weddings. Besides the excitement of the wedding itself, the thought of getting together inspires everyone to drop what they’re doing for a couple of days and turn up. …

Why my dad is my hero — For Christmas, my mom bought a trivia game called “How Well Do You Know Your Family?” Each person draws a card and asks the question shown. Whoever answers correctly receives the card as a prize. I read the question on my card. “Who is my hero?” I asked. “Me!” laughed…

It would be so easy to pass as straight, but truth is I’m not — When I was twenty years old, I fell in love with a beautiful, dark woman whose roots we didn’t know. She was adopted, so we could only guess at her dark skin and eyes, and thick eyebrows. Like Frida Kahlo, she had her own style. She really didn’t give a…

Also called maidenhair tree which isn’t creepy at all — “What’s that horrible smell,” asks one of the kids in my history class. “Did someone barf up their lunch?” Another kid says with his fingers squeezing his nose closed so as to not inhale any more of the smell. I sit at my desk and look around as if trying…

The revelatory nature of nature herself — It started with birds in my 30s. Birds of prey in particular. I’d drive around town and notice a hawk on a building. Stepping out the backdoor in the early morning, I’d see a Cooper’s hawk perched on our electric pole, singularly focused on eating its freshly hunted meal. Back…

How to tell your own and why we desperately need them — I get this craving so deep it makes my blue-green bones ache. My mouth waters, and my ears ring a little. I feel like a child sneaking a nibble of something she knows is off-limits. I don’t give in to this craving, except at gas station checkouts on random days…

Spawned Questions — There’s a wide-open gate out in the middle of nowhere hinges rusted brown with years Who left it open? Gates, as a rule, are closed, or they are in the process of being opened to then be closed, or they are in the process of being closed — especially those…

“Live life like it’s the last breath you take for that breath is the whole essence of living, the little things in life are what connects us to all the big things we live for.” — Robert Frost When Kinsley was two years old, she already knew how to affirm…

Creating a workout space counts as a workout — I still blame my last few pounds on the Covid lockdown. Being such an “unprecedented” area of the law, there’s no statute of limitations on Covid excuses. I’m riding that bad boy as long as I can. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I did head downstairs to get…