It seems like all I ever go to New Orleans for is funerals. Last time it was my step-grandmother, and now her husband has followed. Even getting remarried didn’t save him from dying three years after losing his wife of forty years. And his new wife Mary has known her share of loss, saying farewell […]

My friend M made a 3200 mile bicycle tour from Seattle to Delaware ten years ago with a group called Wandering Wheels. They’re a Christian-based organization, and the trip is like some sort of pilgrimage, connecting with the beauty of nature and stopping to rest at various churches along the way.
I recently got a hold […]

My dear friend L spent the last nine months walking, preparing herself for the Breast Cancer 3-Day, held this past weekend. She was the very symbol of struggle and determination, walking so much that at one point she broke her foot, just from all the walking.
But she didn’t let it stop her. She got her boot […]

The story in Breathing Lessons centers around a day trip to an old high school friend’s funeral. The couple taking the trip isn’t all that old, but the wife is having some major empty nest issues. That same weekend, she would be saying good-bye to her daughter, who was heading out for college. And driving out […]

As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been itching to go road tripping. But when I wrote the title of this entry, my mind went instantly to my maternal grandmother. Willy Nelson’s “On the Road Again” was one of her favorite songs, and we sang it for her on her 80th birthday. Her eyes lit up in […]

I’m currently reading Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, set in modern day Mumbai.  It’s led me to research the geography of India, to see which state Mumbai is in and what languages they speak.  There’s a glossary at the back of the book to teach me words I do not understand. I feel the tensions between the […]

Bruce Ogilvie wasn’t anything like Willy Loman. He was successful and popular, a football star in high school who grew up to be a star on the local golf courses. He only sold a product if he believed in it. And he didn’t outlive his usefulness as a salesman, a father, husband, provider, or human […]

He held out through Thanksgiving and Christmas and breathed his last on New Year’s Eve, never to see 2008. And all I could do through all of it was to sing. I’m like that little kid on About a Boy, who starts singing for no apparent reason. It’s a bizarre tic that often gets on […]

My senior year in high school, we had a guest lecturer from the local community college, a poet who challenged us to write a poem about a journey we take every day. The idea was to find beauty in something that we take for granted, to notice things we hardly notice.
Well, lately, I’ve been driving […]

Oh my gosh. There’s babies poppin’ out everywhere!
I slip back to northern Mexico with The Hummingbird’s Daughter where Teresita Urrea was a mid-wife and a healer. The book starts with Teresita’s own birth, and we see so many babies born through her eyes and her gentle, but strong hands. She brought life wherever she went, […]