Memorial Day, 2020. A long weekend in the midst of months where work and school, the things by which I usually measure the turning of the year, are all off kilter. My daughters finished school at the end of the week before last. There was no race to the finish line right before this holiday as there usually is. The school year, despite nigh- ( Read more... )

Erin sat at her dining room table and felt broken. She thought she’d been working hard all day, but when she looked down at her calendar and at the list of completed items her supervisor had her keeping, it seemed like she couldn’t legitimately claim that she had completed anything. Between phone calls and emails, it felt like she hadn’t even been ( Read more... )

It has come back to me now, that as a child, I wasn’t always the bastion of strength that I mostly remember. It is true that as a kid I spent a lot of time on my own. I roamed the woods, and rode my horse, explored the swamps and paddled and boated all over the river. I jumped out of trees that I shouldn’t have, took risks with 1,000 pound animals ( Read more... )

In the first dream, there was a delicious sense of ease. There was only blackness but it felt so good not to be striving anymore. Somehow everything had become relaxed. No more aching shoulders. No more tight neck. Her ankles and knees didn’t ache anymore and it felt so good to float without form ( Read more... )

Erin let herself sigh deeply as soon as she was sure her mom had hung up. Sometimes there was no winning. Sometimes there was really just no winning ( Read more... )

The sun was beginning to filter through the trees at an angle. Bryn pedaled harder and checked her watch. She was almost to the spot where she wanted to make the call. It looked like she still had ten minutes or so. Her plan was going to work out ( Read more... )

By the third week of the pandemic, my partner didn’t even mind when I snuck away to walk with my work-wife on a Wednesday evening. I mean, I guess I wasn’t even really sneaking. Evan knew that plague or no plague, I wasn’t going to leave him for a lady. Plus there wasn’t really anything wrong with going for a walk through a relatively nearby ( Read more... )

Ben wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone’s crap anymore. He was tired of his dad, absolutely sick of his mom, and one hundred percent through with his younger twin sisters. If he had to hear his mom tell them all that they should be thankful that they lived in a nice big three bedroom house one more time he was going to scream. No house was big ( Read more... )

Friday the 13th, March of 2020. The Ides are almost upon us and it is such a weird day. I don’t feel well, but I can’t decide if it’s allergies or a mild cold or sheer exhaustion or if, perhaps, I am a fool who should be pressing my medical community for a test to see if I carry the dread disease. I did just do a weekend trip to a swim meet in San ( Read more... )

This is my first trip to the San Juan and Orcas islands. Ariel was excited at the possibility of seeing whales from kayaks here. But now it seems unlikely that we’ll get to do that. It’s evening. Mother and papa have two groups of people that they’re meeting with here and tonight is to be a special dinner. Mother hired a cook to prepare a special ( Read more... )