the beauty of an ordinary life
Your truck (Henry's truck), the one you drove to Memphis (an eternity ago), sits on the parking pad behind our house (still with its New Mexico license plates), where it has sat, flat-tired, for a dozen years, neglected. Our son, who used to sit in the bathtub with you making shampoo mohawks and blowing bubbles, … Continue reading 1
These are, you understand, just inflection points, the ones that shape the arc of my plot. Fact: All of these stories are true. Fiction: These stories are the only truth. This summer, two years ago, is our musical summer, capped at the end with Van Morrison on your 50th birthday. Early in the summer we … Continue reading 2
We are very close. Almost to now. This is the summer, three years ago, when I take a month off, cart the kids to the beach and get sunburned. I sign up for a water aerobics class, and you offer, every day, to play Bill Murray and slip a Baby Ruth in the pristine water … Continue reading 3
This is the summer our dog dies. She was the dog you had been waiting for, the one you encouraged me to wait for when I insisted instead on a quick fix. You found her in a field, abandoned. A show-quality mastiff who had been bred and dumped (or perhaps ran away, escaped a fate … Continue reading 4
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
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
jenny's lark 