Wish Ewe Were Here

Helen: Well, Cameron! Hello! Here we are again! I’m so glad we’re back two years after the original 100-days-in-a-dress post, because (a) I didn’t know what to write about for Monday and it was probably going to be something depressing about my dad dying (b) I am so obsessed with everyday, year-round wool clothing now. […]

What the Kids Are Doing

The kids aren’t doing this any more. I miss it. I still have random people asking me about the kid arrangements, so apparently other people miss it too. But kids grow, that’s what they do; they move on. In this case, they’ve moved on to jumping rope, blowing conch shells, and digging bunkers — like […]

Released

She was in the narrow shed, on a high shelf, in a cardboard box advertising Dole fresh cut salads on the side. In black Sharpie on top, the word “Judi” in my stepdad’s scrawl gave away the actual contents. “It’s time to get Mom out of the storage facility,” I told him during a recent […]

Synchronicity

I believe.  I don’t know in what exactly, but something is happening out there, gears and orbits turning, disparate points meeting, then moving apart. We’re bound in ways unexplained by simple principles of causality. That is my belief. My youngest turned 18 last week as comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS passed at its closest to Earth, which didn’t […]

Voice Mails from the Great Beyond

On the morning my friend Kristina died, I listened and re-listened to the last voice mail she left me. I needed to hear her voice, and the mundaneness of her 35 second message was comforting. She was sorry she’d missed my call. She’d been out for a walk. She was planning a bike ride tomorrow […]

Once Upon a Phylogeny

This post first appeared in 2013. My dancing shoes no longer have heels, but at least fairy tales are timeless. One of the ornaments that lives in a box in the attic has a fairy wearing a blue gown on it; she’s sitting on a crescent moon. This picture has a quote below it: “If […]

Snapshot – Er, SnapVideo: Post-Spawn

On a salmon walk last week, a friend and I encountered this battered, spawned-out chinook in the final hours of his life: his milt spent, flesh ragged and necrotic, preparing to relax into the embrace of death. We watched him swirl aimlessly in this pool for half an hour, in awe of the vibrant spirit […]