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Witness

I had always thought of us as a model family. My mother taught nursery school. My father was the high-school principal. I was a twirler, which meant that on game days or national holidays — and especially Founder’s Day, the Founder being our direct dead relative — I’d put on my Temperance Wildcat outfit and throw the baton with eleven other girls, mainly girls like myself: not pretty enough to cheerlead, not smart enough to do none of it at all.

October 2001

I realized that this is what so often happens when we come face to face with some unimaginable horror: we run for help, but no one believes us. No one believes how many species are disappearing, how many prisoners are being tortured, how many women are being broken by self-important men.

August 2001

It’s important to recognize my imperfections; it’s also important to stop pretending I’m less than I am. This morning, I woke up suffused with a love no words can describe. But in a few minutes, I was reaching for my dog-eared script, already forgetting the radiance that had permeated my being.

Getting Dirty

A “gandy dancer,” a shoe-repair store, an annual slide show

Rebellion

Sister Mary Joseph, an ax and a prized peach tree, a fabric highway

Going To Bed

A late night walk on the beach, Drambuie or bourbon, the dreaded Carrot Lady

Decomposing

It’s all in the way she comes out of her shop and says, “Come in here, my dear,” as soon as she sees you on the sidewalk in your nightgown, your dog beside you. It’s the way she says, “There, there,” though she has no idea what’s wrong. The way she clutches at her own breast when you try to tell her.

On Catching My Husband With A Cigarette After Seven Years Of Abstinence

Help Me With This

It’s been almost two years since I shot and killed a ten-year-old boy. It was an overcast day in early December, and I was hunting from the deer stand I’d built where my property meets the woods.