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Childhood
Hell
Ten minutes into a recent flight from San Jose to St. Louis, I was reveling in a first-class upgrade and a new Margaret Atwood novel when I felt and heard a powerful thump. The aircraft, which had been gaining altitude, rocked vigorously.
February 2002
Visiting Relatives
Drinking hallucinogenic tea, kneeling on peppercorns on the cellar floor, visiting in Beirut as shells shrieked around the city
January 2002Estrellita
As I closed my front door and began to walk up the street, someone called to me. I turned and saw a young girl approach out of the darkness. She appeared neat and studentlike, slightly stooped by the weight of a backpack, a brand-new notebook under her arm. Her long, shiny hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She spoke to me in rapid Spanish, in a pipsqueak voice.
November 2001
On The Lake
This was early in the morning, the day after Thanksgiving. My grandfather wore a tan cotton jacket and an old-man’s hat almost the same color. He sat at the wheel of a 1948 Ford he had bought and painted himself. You could look at the lime-cream color from twenty feet away and see the brush marks. He turned the key, glancing at me with the beginning of a smile and with a squint — against Kool smoke — that looked like a wink.
August 2001Solstice
His mother is blessed with a dull acceptance that cushions her suffering, but Arnell, her youngest son, is bright, and this winter will leave its mark on him.
May 2001Sunbeams
May 2001The first mystery is simply that there is a mystery, a mystery that can never be explained or understood, only encountered from time to time. Nothing is obvious. Everything conceals something else.
My Stupid Harmony
The Wish Family was my family dressed in red-white-and-blue outfits, performing songs written by my father and played by my older brother Todd on our secondhand piano, my sister Mare on a convicted uncle’s guitar, and my little brother Jay on a snare drum so beaten its skin had been taped.
May 2001Mothers And Sons
Picking out a baby outfit, playing an innocent game, becoming a caregiver
May 2001
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