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, […]

My father is an honest man among pirates. It’s a hard role to fill, a difficult task to achieve, keeping your integrity and principles when corruption surrounds you.
He believed in respect and chivalry, whisked my mother away from the sea dogs in her family. Because he was sensitive and respectful, the pirates judged him as […]

The last time I was in New Orleans was three years ago, which was a year before Katrina blew through town. It’s still the city I remember, filled with family I’ve missed. But it’s also gravely wounded.
I’m here in mourning, and my new journal is filled with eulogies. I visited a cousin who’s been rebuilding […]

Because of Mother’s Day and the recent death of my grandmother, I’ve been thinking a lot about the women in my family. Somehow, each of them is linked in my mind to a kind of food, and the thoughts have been pouring in since I cooked dinner on Friday evening.
I grew up with three grandmothers. […]

It’s a year for big family events - births, graduations, weddings, funerals. Two of my girlfriends will be having babies soon, and another just got married. My nephew is graduating from high school in two weeks, and my young cousin is getting married in August. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about hopes and wishes, […]