I want to feel myself part of things, of the great drift and swirl; not cut off, missing things… Joanna Field In 2006 my partner, Gene, and I went to my fortieth high school reunion. This was in a town where appearances mattered above all else, where I’d learned growing up that how I […]
My Life As Pentimento
For many of us, writing is a journey of self-discovery, full of delights and surprises. I never set out to write a memoir. I had no plan or outline, no clear beginning and an unknown conclusion. It just became one along the way. Eight years ago, I had just discovered that my daughter was a […]
December 14 – A Holiday Recovery Moment
Oh! The value of a moment in time, how small and short they are—but how some moments have the power to re-energize us. I had a rare spiritual awakening recently. An ordinary real estate deal went south. Boy, I was pissed, counting all the dollar bills I would lose and rapidly tumbling down a rabbit […]
Spelunking
This essay was first posted in The Memoir Network July, 2017 I enjoy many forms of physical exercise, from climbing mountains, to backpacking along trails, to bicycling, and even swimming. But mostly nowadays I just go hiking, sometimes with my grandchildren and partner, but often alone. Working the muscles of my body is good for […]
August 10 – No Quarantine for Sea Creatures
“Hello, Bob. And Bob. And Bob. And Bob. And Bob.” Gene named them all ‘Bob’—easier that way. Even before quarantine, Gene was a little nutty about this group of eight or nine giant starfish living under seal rock. That’s the rock we paddled past a few years ago with a fat seal sunning itself and sitting […]
July 3 – The Eyes to See
Many mornings at dawn the western horizon has bands of blue, then pinkish-orange rising like horizontal stripes over Whidbey Island. At just the right time the pink hovers over the Olympics, still jagged and dark, punctuating this band of color. Then I sit and watch the coloring fade as the sun in the East […]
