It layered itself like a fuzzy film along baseboards I didn’t often clean. It gathered on books I hadn’t opened in years. Dust marked what I liked to forget. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” the clergy would recite on Ash Wednesday in the church of my childhood. I remember... Continue Reading →
In the Wake of Pain and the Gold of Care
“How’s your back doing?" my father would ask with a hope-you’re-okay smile from across the dinner table. He struggled to remember many things during the last years of his life, but he remembered that my back was hurting. Perhaps he worried, knowing at his age how pain can accumulate and weigh us down. I felt... Continue Reading →
On the Changing of Seasons
Lately, I’ve been fighting it. Pandemic life has meant so much change already. I’m feeing less and less desire to adapt. I’m feeling strongly protective of things I wouldn’t have expected to hold onto so tightly. As summer passes and days shorten, I find myself feeling inordinate amounts of grief about small things like the... Continue Reading →