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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sweeping Away The Broken Glass
The first transformer blew in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes to sparks flying over the ice-coated trees like fireworks. I made it to the window first, James close behind me, hopping awkwardly.
January 2014
Fog
Outside my bedroom window the trees are wrapped in fog. Silvery threads of rain coat the glass. It’s not yet dawn, and I don’t know why I’m awake. I rub my eyes, pulling the sheet closer around my shoulders as I sink back into bed. And then I remember: the 5 AM check. I push aside the covers, grab my glasses, and glance at the clock: 4:55. I’ve awakened before the alarm. Trained.
December 2013
Praying Alone In Qatar
It’s still dark when the muezzin calls for Fajr, the first prayer of the day. I’ve already been awake for a couple of hours: lying in bed, not thinking, not trying not to think, just taking in the predawn sounds of this utterly foreign city, Doha, the capital of Qatar. Our house faces Al Shamal Road, a long highway that snakes across the country from the northern coastline to the southern border with Saudi Arabia.
December 2013Arcadia
But there’s a force that pulls with quiet, steady gravity; a single force that doesn’t go away, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It seems primordial. I suspect it has something to do with love. Or that it is, precisely, love. Whatever name one wants to give it, it is the force that trumps all else, the force that causes me to wish to be right here, just as I am, forever, watching my daughter as she makes another valentine.
December 2013
We Regret To Inform You
Dear Young Artist:
Thank you for your attempt to draw a tree. We appreciate your efforts, especially the way you sat patiently on the sidewalk, gazing at that tree for an hour before setting pen to paper, and the many quick strokes of charcoal you executed with enthusiasm. But your smudges look nothing like a tree.
Let Nothing You Dismay
How can you help remembering it, all of it, when Christmas comes? Christmas is like drowning and seeing your life before your eyes. Every year — and it’s the darkest week of the year — someone strings lights on a tree, and you stand in front of it with whoever or whatever is supposed to make you happy. And you smile, maybe in honest, naked joy, or maybe you fake it because you got an umbrella.
November 2013
Cut
The names are all typed on the coach’s old typewriter which screws up the letter y so it looks more like w so you check again from the top looking for Dowle, Brian and then you check again reading up from the bottom this time just in case some weird thing happened because you wear thick spectacles and the gym door has this thick old shimmery glass and maybe the two densities of glass cancel each other out or something.
November 2013
The Chanel Suit
It was during a search for jeans for my sons that I saw the gray suit hanging by itself like a fine work of art. A prominent sign identified it: COCO CHANEL SUIT. Even in the midst of the store’s usual castoff opulence, a Chanel suit was an unexpected find.
November 2013
Always
My mother was always afraid I would grow up to disgrace her and my family, and I did.
November 2013
Already Falling
You think you can feel the peace in this room. A line from Matthew comes to you: “Forgive us as we forgive . . .” Something is happening here with the light and the birds and the wind outdoors: a transformation from despair to readiness. You call for your mother.
October 2013
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