My Father Becomes a Bird
Sitting at the edge of his hospice bed, eyes closed, Dad focuses on his breath. Late-stage lung cancer has made each one hard earned. Each one, only the slightest rise and fall of the clean T-shirt his nurse put on him this morning. I stand behind him, my thumbs massaging—so lightly now—the tendons of his...
Into The Woods
There were three of us—me, Jack, and Heddy—who always played in the woods. We were never inside unless we were in school. We stayed outside until our mothers called us for dinner. We called them our woods but really, they were just a strip of trees between our new subdivision and the only old farm...
Lunch with Norman Mailer, 1987
The Round Table meets at Trader Vic’s. Would I come as their guest? They need a woman. I don’t know, I say: I’m no Dorothy Parker. “No,” my host agrees kindly, “but you’ll do.” Nervous, I follow him up the stairs to the Captain’s Cabin. I meet the famous movie producer, the famous architect, the...
Bird Strike
It is a given that my son will be startled and come running when the blackbird hits the window of his bedroom with a forceful, insulated thud, and that following me downstairs, my son will jump and flap and spin on the back porch as I bend to examine the damage; finding a fledgling, stunned....
Hermit Thrush
Drawn to the spider plants in our bow window, a hermit thrush hit the glass and fell to the ground. We barely knew its name. A song sparrow, I suggested yesterday, spotting it on the suet feeder, fooled by the streaks on its breast. It’s too big you said joining me at the window and...
My Pain Doctor Asks What My Goals Are
I want to tell him that the chronically ill don’t have goals. They don’t want to be ill. I want my old body back. I don’t want to be in his office. I tell the doctor, I want to stand long enough to make grilled cheese, want to walk the dark living room at night...
Roll Call
Roster. Name. First, last. Eye color: green. Second seat from the window. The first joke—a startled smile, eyes lifted. My comment on the fourth paragraph of her essay in October; her response. Chapter 7: the day we discussed the horizon and what it might symbolize, whether it’s better to go or to stay. Her fear,...
Lanier Drive
Summers in Atlanta, I almost never wore shoes. I’d go barefoot through the woods or pick my way down the rocky drive to the smooth asphalt on our street named for a poet—Sidney Lanier who praised the rivers coming down from the rocky crags in the mountains northeast of us—and I liked how tough my...
How to Prepare for A Difficult Conversation
Step 1: Choose from the following activities: A) Wash the dishes B) Vacuum the living room carpet C) Rake the backyard Step 2: If in Step 1 you chose “A,” stand at the sink and watch the flotsam of leftover breakfast swirl and gather in the strainer. If you chose “B,” stare into the middle...
Final Affairs
Find all my passwords on a yellow legal pad under my laptop; remember last winter Steph wrote my obituary, read it again before you publish it, make sure it is laugh-out-loud funny and don’t pay to publish it in the local paper but instead blast it on social media; remember to update my blog; call...
A Toddler Boy
Your daddy had a dream, my mother tells me, about a toddler boy. A perfect mix of my eight-years-younger brother Joshua, my parents’ only son, and my sixteen-month-old Lydia, my parents’ only grandchild. The dream-toddler had Joshua’s eyes, Lydia’s cheeks and chin, both babies’ blond curly hair. We’re on the phone—me in Oklahoma, my mother...
Dear Facebook Friends
I thought about taking a picture of my breakfast, then posting it, the subtext being, you know, how fucking cool and healthy I am. I mean, who eats fresh papaya and mango and avocado and banana straight from a fruit stall on Moon Muang Soi 6 in Chiang Mai, Thailand? Yes, I’d add my location,...
I Am Not The One They Found in a Cornfield
It is foggy-wet and cold, a typical gray day in Ohio. I am standing above a rectangle of flat granite, thinking: they’ve put the wrong date. They’ve said Kelly died on September 25th, the day they found her. But I don’t mind. No one wants to hear an examiner’s speculation about such things, and I...
We Are Galaxies, Briefly
The last time I saw the other Ryan we were grown men, sitting in the same church pew where we had been boys, still blood brothers only now not quite believers, listening to the bishop talk about the devil flaying souls in outer darkness, that unimaginative name in Mormon cosmology given to the place for...
Chopping
This baby is sucking the life out of me, my daughter says, and I want to return with Just you wait, but I don’t, because I know how annoying mothers can be, always sounding warnings. Instead, I stand chopping—onions, celery, a breast and a thigh from a chicken—making a thin soup that will pass through...
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