I’ve been thinking about tomatoes. Not the uniformly red tomatoes of about the same size and shape that you can buy in the produce aisle at your local grocery store. No, I have been thinking about late summer tomatoes grown in a backyard garden, the gloriously uneven and brilliantly colored globes sheltered from the midmorning…
The desk in my room is the perfect height to lean your elbows on and ponder the world outside the picture window it sits in front of—to watch the row of houses across the street and all the comings and goings of the day, to see clearly the sidewalk that used to be decorated by…
In 1964, on the album Wednesday Morning, 3AM, the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence, made its debut. It wasn’t the song as we know it today, a quiet echo with electric guitars rippling softly in the background. A stripped down acoustic version, the song didn’t get much airplay, and the album itself…
Just for a minute this morning, between the shock of waking too early and the rush of getting ready for the day, in the early bright light of a still summer day, sit with me as I poke and prod through some stories, to remember, and ponder, and look at the things that can, for…
The most beautiful thing in the sterile white classrooms where I teach are the students themselves, full of vibrancy and noise and mess, enthusiastic in both their excitement and confusion, bringing color into the room in the same way that a flung open window brings in light and sound and gently wafting breezes to tease…
It were a foolish and ridiculous arrogance to esteem ourselves the most perfect thing in this Universe. —Michel De Montaigne. “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.” —Henry David Thoreau Yesterday it rained, a soaking rain that saturated the soil, sinking deep into the starving earth, and the air seemed to smell of deep…
It has been years since the old stereo console in my grandmother’s front room worked. Years since anyone even looked at it as anything other than a convenient place to prop the family pictures that litter her front room with memories that at 95 only she recalls. And I am not sure what prompted it,…
One of the realities for me of being a writing teacher is that I spend my life reading: reading books, reading craft theory, reading student drafts, reading the work of my writing group. I find myself frequently in a place to discuss with others their ideas and their opinions and their storytelling—whether they are writing…
“I don’t think we want to go this way,” I said to my husband as we headed north on the freeway right outside of town. It was fall, and we were packed in the car, with our kids and luggage and coolers full of snacks and on the road meals, for a weekend trip to…
My youngest son is 17, and right now, in this moment as I write, he is practicing the piano, pounding too loudly at the keys trying to perfect a song for the Christmas recital that may or may not happen, all things being what they are right now with social distancing and limiting interactions and…