The other day I opened a plastic bin filled with my mother’s personal things. When emptying her apartment months ago, I had stuffed into them files and papers and notebooks and photographs and more notepapers from drawers in her desk and nightstand and metal files. I then covered the bins with their tight lids as if to preserve her life, [...]
winter willow I sat on the floor and pulled the lid from a squat octagonal storage bin, releasing a crisp waft of evergreen. Inside, a trove of trinkets lay in beds of crinkled butcher paper. They varied in size, shape, color—and age. I rummaged through the collection, my fingers becoming sticky from leftover tree sap clinging to the Christmas tree [...]
The sun rose just enough above the horizon that morning to obscure my vision. My morning walk through a path in the woods was brisk in pace and in weather as I carried a load of thoughts from the weeks of stuffing bags with my mother’s clothes to be given to the church, a plastic bin with photographs of her [...]
As the fall mornings evolve and daylight diminishes, I find myself waking in the dark. It feels like just yesterday when the early morning sun lifted quickly over the horizon, rousing me from sleep, and the bedroom would take on a lighted glow. Now, I struggle to see any hint of light through the trees; the room remains dark. I [...]
She handed to me a shoe box patterned in stamps from around the world, only the box wasn’t for shoes but was for photographs, and it wasn’t to hold memories of global travels but to house snapshots of the journeys in years of my family. I had placed it among similar boxes in a narrow closet among unused coffee table [...]
I owe you an apology. I haven’t seen you in two months with no attempt to say hello with even a scribble of a few sentences. We haven’t tangled in sorting mixed words or found clarity in excavating unclear meanings or built a solid structure from a wobbly one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t thought about [...]
I’ve all but forgotten about my anniversary. This memory-maker was neither of a person nor of a place, but with a thing. When “three years ago on this day” popped up on social media, a promotional ad I had created for it, I was prompted to remember the soon-to-be anniversary. This time, it wasn’t about the big memory itself, the [...]
At a recent get-together with my now twenty-something nephews, I saw their once little boy smiles and tender eyes in each of their now matured-men faces. I couldn’t help but to remember them from years ago, their arched necks looking up when walking narrow city streets in Chicago, fearless busy bodies scaling jungle gyms at the playground, mesmerized focus while [...]
For most months, I’m out first thing for a brisk walk, or a mighty jog through the woods, depending on how this aging body responds to a willing spirit. But this day was a cold winter one where tears settled in around my eyes and when the sun seemed asleep and blanketed by an off-white canvas overhead. I was desperate [...]
At first, I don’t notice it. But then a celery green tip catches my eye. It pokes through a pot of grey cracked dirt, nudging up against the pot’s rim, reaching for sunlight and air. What a surprise! I wonder how it has enough strength for fresh growth during a winter’s dry dormancy and dim light. I was hopeful for [...]