Moth-adjacent

I think Lee said something about lights and moths and asked if I wanted to go. He’s pretty good at finding interesting things to do so I added it to my calendar and didn’t really think about it again until the date approached. Then the details emerged bring a flashlight wear closed-toed shoes, long pants, […]

The Grief Diaries: Synchronicity

On the last Saturday night of April 2024 Andrew, surrounded by his fellow grad students, celebrated the successful end of his first year of grad school with a glass in hand and a bet on the future. Flush with anticipation of an upcoming study abroad trip to Japan, excited about Saquon Barkley, the Philadelphia Eagles […]

Here We Go Again

My task this week is to ORGANIZE A SCAVENGER HUNT, and so I’ve been thinking. When I was in middle school, participating in perhaps my first scavenger hunt, we went door to door asking for random items and people gave them to us. That would be mind-blowing for kids today. We didn’t check them off […]

Portrait Artist Of The Year

We watch too much TV, most of it selected by me, on subscription services my parents would not understand: HULU, Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock. Even those with names they’d recognize would be unrecognizable to them: HBO Max, Disney. We watch on a TV screen so big my dad would definitely be worried about how much […]

The Grief Diaries: Great, it’s the holidays

We survived the holidays. Although, survived is not a word I particularly like. I watched a reel on Instagram this morning of a woman talking about the loss of her son, and how so many people say to her they don’t think they could survive the loss of a child. She said she used to […]

The Grief Diaries: Fall

Andrew liked fall. I don’t have official confirmation, but based on the things he loved, I think I could make the case. As those things, football, the state fair, Halloween, come to life this year, we are reminded both of what he loved and what we’ve lost. Last spring, as the buds began to appear, […]

Howling Cow

I learned about farms much the way most kids do, in the pages of a picture book. My grandparents were Nebraska farmers and my dad grew up on the farm, but I was raised on the streetlight-lined streets of suburban Oklahoma. Sure, we like a good Farmer’s Market and enjoy a nice Farm to Table […]

The Grief Diaries: Part One

Last week, my sister Emilie and I spent a long time wandering the LEGO store at the mall near my home. The store is new, much closer than the one in Raleigh. We were greeted by a store worker who accepted our polite dismissal of assistance without a drop in his smile. An avid LEGO […]

An Annual Lifelong Commitment

We’d been married about two months when I looked in the newspaper for Free-to-Good-Home cats and found Butler, a grey and white tuxedo boy about nine months old, and the best friend a young, often-to-be-alone, far-from-home gal could have hoped for. I needed a pet. I’d always had one. The year we lived in Australia, […]

The Usual Suspects

I’ve reached a complicated age regarding my ability to see. I started wearing glasses in my sophomore year of high school and eventually moved primarily to contact lenses in my mid-20s. As I entered my 40s, I realized that I was having a harder time with reading up close. As a teenager, I remember being […]