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Friendship
Among The Lillies
At the ranch we used to pray that God would break us so we would become humbled, willing to do his bidding. I didn’t realize then that prayers weren’t necessary to hurry this request along: life will break the proudest heart, bring us to unrecognizable versions of ourselves, like it or not.
May 2003
The Gifted Classes
I have nothing to say about the politics of poverty, what causes it and what it causes and how to make it go away. I can only tell you what poverty does to a person. It gets inside you, nestles into your bones, and gives you a chill that you cannot shake. Poverty becomes you — it shapes what you see and taste and dream — till there is no telling where you stop and poverty begins. To be poor is to live in denial — not the denial of professional counselors and self-help books, which is an avoidance of some truth too painful to admit, but denial in its most literal sense: you must say no to yourself constantly.
January 2003Be True To Your School
Well, I finally got the last e-mail you sent me. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. They only let us use the “lab” three days a week now (I don’t know why they call it that) since the seniors complained that the underclassmen were hogging all the “lab time.” They keep saying that we’re going to get more computers, but who knows? It still smells like band-aids in here, in case you were wondering.
January 2003What You Leave Is Yours To Leave
I hated my parents’ goats. I hated them because they were stupid and always looked at me as if it were for the first time. And that lack of recognition never changed, from the day they arrived until the night they saved my life.
September 2002
This Bastard Day
It is March 4, a Sunday, and the Northeastern United States is buttoning up for a gigantic snowstorm. Despite these dire weather predictions, in which I have little faith, I have journeyed to Pittsburgh with my wife and two young sons to visit Philip DeLucia, my oldest friend in the world, who is very ill.
July 2002
Mute
Our dinner conversation was usually quick, as my father was a fast writer. He might ask, “What did you do today?” or, “How’s school?” and while I answered, he would already be scribbling out his next question. But that night, Dad didn’t write or even look my way. We just sat there twirling spaghetti onto our forks and forcing giant noodle-cocoons into our mouths.
April 2002The Happiness Box
While they visited, that invisible beast Loneliness would shift on his paws and pad quietly out of the room, only to return faithfully when darkness fell and I crawled into a bed that was too big. Lucky for me, the kids always stayed as long as possible. Norah, especially, hated to leave. She’d cling to my hand or my neck with the ferocity of the early-abandoned.
March 2002
How To Prosper During The Coming Bad Years
In the summer of 1979, I fell ruinously in love with a coltish, athletically robust Greek girl of fifteen named Nicole Liarkos . When I think of her now (which isn’t very often), I always imagine her poolside, her creamy caramel skin twice bisected by the triple triangles of her buttercup yellow bikini, her left arm blocking the sun from her eyes.
February 2002
Moo
We’re at this motel in Kerrville, Texas, where we’ve come so my friend Shulami can receive her next chemo treatment and have the conversation she’s been avoiding with the doctor. She has neglected to tell me that her cancer has spread, despite the most recent course of treatment.
February 2002
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