the beauty of an ordinary life
You work all night, and you sleep all day, and I hardly ever see you. I have only a handful of photographs of you from this entire year, all of them taken on a winter's trip to see my sister. This picture of my nephew with you, in your signature hat and coat, on my … Continue reading 5
Memory is a kind of fiction. It's the story we tell ourselves, the one we decide is true because we want it to be true. These stories are my memories of you, of us, in our 20 summers living together under the same roof. These stories are my truth. Fact: By this point in our … Continue reading 6
You were sleepy (and a little grumpy) when you came downstairs, into the kitchen, to get something to eat and then go back to bed, because you were still working nights and tired all the time. You said: What are you doing, playing on the computer? I said: I'm not playing; I'm writing. What are … Continue reading 7
This part does not last long: You work nights, so you can pick up the children after school, drive in the carpool line and talk to the teachers. I take the children to school in the mornings, while you are asleep, and we listen to books. You work nights because of retirement benefits and orthodontic … Continue reading 8
They didn't know their names, much less how to walk on a leash. They weren't housebroken. They were heartworm positive and required treatment. You said: Put your dogs in the car, and let's go. We had driven down to a rescue group's house in rural Mississippi to check out a pair of chocolate Labs I'd … Continue reading 9
We are too old now not to be honest in our retelling of some things, aren't we? And looking back, if we are honest, one of the reasons we stayed in Memphis was because we were waiting for my stepmother to die. Not wanting her to die, of course, but simply waiting as life unfolded, … Continue reading 11
This is the year, a dozen years ago, when we could have escaped. It is so easy to see now, in hindsight, that this was the year to make our getaway, before our children started school, before the market crashed, before you planted crape myrtles and lilies and the Japanese maple. We could have escaped … Continue reading 12
I buy a camera, a digital one, and reopen the musty bag of lenses and gear that has been schlepped from city to city, closet to closet, for more than a decade. You coach t-ball. Your mother visits, sits at the kitchen table with our son, drawing pictures of windmills in orange and blue. Orange … Continue reading 13
jenny's lark 