My step-father and brother were with me in a swimming pool. It was a brilliant, warm day, and the water was crystal blue. They were both holding my head under the water. Looking up through the swirling, distorting surface, I saw they were smiling and even laughing. Not knowing how I got here, first I […]
Things around here have been very dry lately. Kind of ironic after the crazy flooding we were getting just two weeks ago. The waters have receded a little, but the earth is saturated and seems to be taking the dry spell better than it would have otherwise. But now instead of flood warnings, we have […]
I was driving out west through high, dry, cliffs and steep terrain with one or two companions. The sky was a brilliant blue, the car was a little red Toyota.
We cruised along a road that traveled high along the edge of a teetering cliff. Overhangs above gushed water down onto the road in torrents. The […]
“Beyond my solitude is another solitude, and to him who dwells therein my aloneness is a crowded market-place and my silence a confusion of sounds. Too young am I and too restless to seek that above-solitude. The voices of yonder valley still hold my ears and its shadows bar my way and I cannot go. […]
I was in the kitchen in our new house in Pittsburgh. I was three. My father returned home from work, coming in the back door off the kitchen. I rushed to him and hugged his legs. My mother was there in the kitchen with us, preparing dinner. All seemed unusually normal and happy for a […]
My kids have invented this language. They sort of adapted it after watching The Gods Must Be Crazy, a 1980 movie about a Bushman who discovers a Coke bottle and sets out to throw it off the ends of the earth because it brings his people pain and suffering. Watching this character and his fellow […]
I am connected to the weather. Changes affect me. I watch the skies. I feel the humidity, or lack thereof, in my skin and hair. I get excited about flood warnings, fire hazards, blizzards and thunderstorms. And a mild, beautiful, cloudless day is something to savor. A day for the hammock.
My hammock is tucked away […]
Back when the grass was still green and lush, and trees were still producing their fruit, I went to Tanglewood to hear Dave Brubeck and his jazz quartet perform. The sun was setting when we arrived and the blue glow in the sky was nothing less than transcendental. It was a sumptuous beginning.
We had arrived […]
One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, my son Vigil (4) and I were home after he had been at pre-school. We were taking off jackets and talking about his morning. Out of nowhere, he asked, “Mama, will all the people on earth die?”
I said to him, “That’s a big question for such a little […]
This ailing tree in my back yard has really been through the wringer. I don’t know what kind of tree it is. When the warm weather comes, it appears to attempt to squish out a few leaves. It is very long and lean, taller than the three-story homes it’s near, but it has not managed […]