Somehow I always knew there was something about my dad’s heart. I’m not sure exactly what I knew, but I did know that he didn’t eat certain things, like eggs and bacon, and ate other things, like canned tuna and low-fat cheese and margarine. (It was the eighties.) He enrolled in a cholesterol study. Bottles […]
I wrote this essay two years ago. We had just gotten back from Japan, and I was still basking in the warm glow of the trip. Now, of course, the trip seems even sweeter. I also like this essay because the first time I posted it, I spelled ginkgo wrong throughout, as kindly pointed out […]
This week, I was reading a story from a few years ago about what the last snow on earth might look like. Snow algae, which occur naturally in the snowpack, rise to the surface during the spring; when they emerge, they turn red. This “watermelon snow,” these days, could be seen as a warning. The […]
Last week I asked a friend, new to town, to meet me on the corner by Mockingbird Lane. I have been noticing mockingbirds more since the start of the pandemic—the bright flash of white tail feathers, the snippets of stolen songs. And I’d been to this corner many times—it’s the start of one of my […]
This spring, I listened to an interview with Tiffany Shlain, whose family has spent the last decade-plus observing a tech Shabbat: turning off all their devices for 24 hours, once a week. Back when her book first came out, in 2019, I might not have been as interested. We were those parents who wouldn’t let […]
It’s fig season again! This post first ran in October 2019. Now we have a squirrel who I’m competing with to get the ripe ones off our bigger tree. And our little tree? It’s still little, with about six figs and two leafy branches. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the branches seem a little stronger […]
Right now, my summer feet are having fun in the beautiful red dirt in the Southwest. This post first ran in August 2019. At the beginning of summer, my feet often feel tender. There is a particular stretch of asphalt between the university parking lot and the beach that is especially pitted, and the sharp […]
Earlier this month, I was walking along the beach in an sunrise fog when I saw a perfect sand dollar on the sand. I held it in my palm for a moment, debating: would I crush it between here and home? By taking it off the beach, would I bring some other misfortune, to someone […]