I couldn’t get the tractor started. Again. The mid-60’s relic always needed a jump, but I thought, through some miracle of corroded wire and rusted metal, somehow this time would be different. But it rarely is, right? When someone shows you who they are, over and over, you should probably believe them. Even if that […]
You pregnant yet? I interrogated the female with the direct question, as I climbed through the fence to feed the horses this morning. She didn’t answer. Ducks don’t talk. But I got an answer this afternoon, when I saw her guiding her young around the pond in the pasture. Usually, at least a half dozen […]
Easter was confusing but tolerable when I was a kid. A rabbit would hide eggs in the backyard, and sometimes they’d hold surprises like a dollar bill or Hershey’s kiss in their plastic shells. Unless, of course, I found one of the hardboiled versions I’d dyed while sporting a well-intentioned bib at the dinette table. […]
Colin wasn’t my boss. But he was slightly older than me, and had been at the company longer, so he wore the badge of seniority. All these kids running into walls these days, trying to get series A funding for their unicorn of an idea… they’re only doing that now because we paved the way. […]
Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight. I don’t know when Johnny Cash said this. Or where. Or even if. But the Internet says he did. Ah, the Internet. Remember when I told you about that 57-year-old lady living in a trailer park, ranting about […]
There’s a place on the Big Island that is sacred in many ways to our family. I get over there when I can, and Hawaii requires a negative PCR test before takeoff from the mainland, then a rapid test upon arrival. I tested negative before the flight there, and positive when I landed. I was […]
Well, I wrote a book. I mean, I’ve written a few. But this one is different. This book started out as a collection of rants from a foul-mouthed, 57-year-old chain-smoking lady living in a run-down trailer park. She’d come to life in moments of vexed observation, when I’d notice irritating human behavior, but didn’t want […]
When the wind blows from the east, an otherworldly quiet settles in this little valley, a feeling of what was, before us. I’d just tucked the horses in with their last flakes of hay and was standing outside their stalls, becoming a part of the silence, when I heard the call. Who? Who? I followed […]
She was alone for 36 years was my dad’s text to me this afternoon. Her husband died in 1980, but she hung on until just a few years ago, which I wrote about right here. I just re-read that memory, and feel as close to the moment now as I was then. She would’ve been […]
Now, more than ever, I hope you find your own reminder. Here’s mine. **** “Do you believe in Santa Claus?” The question came a few years ago, from the little girl in a puffy pink jacket sitting next to me. She’d been in my seat by the window when I boarded the plane, and I’d […]
They are rising and falling in front of me now, a fluke occasionally emerging on the tail end of a barnacled back’s ridge radius, before the next dive. I also dove, early this morning, into the thick, quiet peace below the surface. The ocean was already churning and confused by the trade winds, but the […]
This day should be every day. I knew a guy whose first words, every morning before his feet hit the bedside floor, were Thank you Thank you Thank you. I should’ve asked him what he was grateful for, back when he was sitting next to me in his underwear. We were watching a Miami Heat […]