As I get older I have been afraid dismayed and amazed at the private pain that is endured around me; both strangers and loved ones whose faces carry the heavy weight of life. I have always managed to come out on top of my pain, sometimes barely, sometimes after a time. My way is to […]
You only have a short time to be a Superhero. One thing I would like parents to know is that your children begin by thinking you wear blue tights, can fly and are capable of making yourself invisible. They depend on you for their food supply, their blankies, their reading time, walks and talks and […]
Dear Betty: the landlord not to be, I am sorry we had the opportunity to meet. Oh wait, we didn’t really meet. Sure, we had a great phone conversation and you loved me from behind the cell phone. You heard a well-spoken women talking about moving into your apartment with her firefighter husband and honor […]
As a teen I did the following in no particular order: Lied, stole, vandalized, drove a car at age fourteen, shoplifted, ran away, hitchhiked, sneaked out of the house by hanging from a second story window, shaved my head, pierced my ears sixteen times and colored my hair the same as Strawberry Shortcakes. I dated […]
This summer I felt like we were riding a wave. Good news would come with a crescendo and we’d be riding high and then bad news would come and we would be eating sand and picking ourselves up with shells stuck to our faces. We sold our house and rented a new one. Not only […]
Perhaps I send my kid to camp out of nostalgia for the days when I hiked around the mountains at Young Life Camp, meeting boys and singing camp songs, toasting marshmallows and making friends I still have, but I do think every kid should go to camp and here’s why: Every kid should know that […]
Antonyms for normal: abnormal, exceptional, extraordinary, odd, out-of-the-way, strange, unusual, weird When I was in high school all I wanted was to be normal. When my mom asked me if I would jump off a cliff if someone else did I would have said and meant, “Sure, if they were wearing the right shoes […]
Our seventeen hundred square foot house is sold. It’s time to clean house. NO, really, I mean clean house. We are moving into a mere 850 square feet of living space. Some of my friends and family have garages bigger than that. With the move we will half our expenses along with our living space. […]
You ask an eleven year old what the best part of his day was and inevitably it will involve candy that has the consistency of a jellyfish and the nutritional value of shoe leather or less, the disassembling of a clock, a giant bug in the backyard or dad’s tool chest or something electronic, mildly […]
In 1989, the Red Hot Chili Peppers played at Shafer Court on the VCU campus, Gwar was spewing blood and guts citywide and it seemed like everyone was at the Village drinking coffee and getting the breakfast special with a waiter with Buddy Holly glasses. I was a student at VCU, half my head shaved, […]
