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Family and Relationships
Shaving
A teenage rite of passage, a prison barber, a husband’s unfamiliar face
July 2024
To the Bone
“To the Bone” is an ongoing photography project documenting daily life and work on a small family farm in the Hudson Valley. Emily, a single mother, manages their small farm with the help of her children. My intention is to explore the strength, dignity and love that keeps them deeply connected as a family, to each other and to their unique way of life on the farm.
July 2024
A Knife at the Throat
We had never heard of a kid who had cancer. We knew of teenagers who’d been killed in farming accidents and at least a few who had been maimed riding ATVs with no helmets, their skulls coming into contact with country roads. But not cancer. It seemed like something that happened to aunts and uncles. Combined with the lack of rain and the impending foreclosure, 1983 was beginning to feel apocalyptic.
July 2024
My Mother’s Disease Introduces Me to My Mother
My mother’s disease wants / to know my name. // My mother’s disease takes / me in // with my mother’s eyes.
June 2024Compare and Contrast
I just read The Diary of Anne Frank, about a girl who hid from the Nazis. There are many similarities but also differences between us: When she started the diary, she was thirteen, and I will be thirteen in August. We are both girls, and, like her, I have many secrets and depressed emotions. I never hated my mom the way Anne hated hers, but last spring I came close.
June 2024
Gift Shops of the American Wild
The Paradise Inn sits at 5,400 feet on the south slope of Mount Rainier, the highest peak in Washington State. Up here the air is thin and crisp, the colors are saturated, and every breeze carries an aroma of pine and the trill of birdsong. Even immersed in such concentrated beauty, my heart aches. For the hundredth time today I think of Jack, a fellow writer in the graduate program I recently completed. We bonded over our love of books and our homesickness for the Midwest.
June 2024
Sunbeams
June 2024There are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.
Become a Friend of The Sun
The Sun is not immune to the relentless business pressures and tectonic shifts in the media landscape over the last two decades. And while I am grateful these changes have underscored what is vital and unique about The Sun, it seems that every week I read about a worthy publication having to close its doors. We are committed to bringing our readers the best writing and photography, free from the distraction of advertising. With this choice comes the reality that the price of a subscription doesn’t come close to what it costs to print and distribute the magazine and curate the website. As we have throughout our history, we are asking you again, with great humility, to be our partner on this journey and formally become a Friend of The Sun.
June 2024My Father Not the Sky
My dad used to wake us up at 5 AM on Sundays / with the vacuum cleaner, saying, Get out of bed, / the day is wasting, and then he’d be asleep on the couch // by nine, just as the sun began to lift its head / over the houses.
June 2024Guardians
His inability to tell me when he’s sick, the most baseline, possibly the easiest thing to express, means he isn’t expressing a million other needs that are harder to pin down: If his shoes are too tight. If his ear hurts. Once, my son was walking funny. When I looked at his foot, he had a bee stinger sticking out from his toe. Being a parent of a disabled child means I can’t assume anything. I am taking care of his needs, and if I miss a need he can’t express, I’m failing him. I’m always failing him.
June 2024
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