My favorite part of Fritz’s funeral was when his friends got up to tell stories about him--- how he got locked inside the city dump once, how he ate breakfast at Wimpy’s diner every week, and how the waitresses kept a bottle of special syrup there just for him. Fritz was man with his eyes … Continue reading Fritz
Dear Lord, I am not the gardener I was in March, when the earth was thawing, and I stood on a blank slate, and the only green things were the points of the bulbs. I had springtime hopes, just as I always do. When I thought about August, I saw myself filling Wal-Mart bags with … Continue reading A Gardener’s Lament
The wildflowers grow small up on the Rockies. I looked up their biological names when I got home, and nearly all of them were "Dwarf" species. One alpine sunflower was even named, "Old Man of the Mountain," and isn't that perfect? The bluebells and yellow roses are just little, old Dwarves on a Lonely Mountain. … Continue reading Three Thoughts from the Mountain
You're a writer, and suddenly, it's 1940 again, and the streets are dark because the blackout curtains are pulled tight. But behind them, there's a lamp in the window of a second-story university room, where Jack Lewis and his brother brew tea and smoke. The bell of Christ's Church tolls nine as they wait for … Continue reading A Table in 1940
FOR SALE--- White desk with scrolled drawers and just right for a little girl to grow up into— preferably someone who’ll write stories into its wood and not mind the dinks and bruises. I wrote my first novel on it, which also happened to be my last. I wrote my first few articles, then hundreds … Continue reading FOR SALE: Desk In Need of a Writer
I came down the drive tonight just before the rainstorm, and the lamp was on, and the fan moving thick air through the front room, and you weren't home. You'd taken a train to the sea, then a steamship across, and were walking Berlin in 1943, and the bikes were ringing under the bombers (and … Continue reading Girl on the Train
Sometimes, I'll forget whether it’s Dad’s Sunday to preach or not, but as soon as I feel my way down the hallway toward the coffee pot, I know. If he isn’t reading in the armchair by the window, then his black dress shoes wait on the floor next to it. I like to see him … Continue reading The Minister, As I Know Him
The first few things I remember about our stretch of Chatham seashore last summer are the waters chopping and clapping against the rocks, the place where the gray sky touched the horizon, and the points of light that blinked there after dark--- lighthouses across the bay. I also remember how the seashore smelled like dead … Continue reading Death on the Shoreline
Probably the most impassioned thing I ever wrote was an essay called Two-And-A-Half Acres on Edgewood Road. I was eighteen, and for the first time, I’d tried writing about the place I knew best and the people I’d shared it with. I wrote from a hotel room at night, rain blearing the windows and brake … Continue reading The Climbing Tree
This post is from last summer's blog series, The Cape Cod Letters, in which my grandpa Larry and I wrote to each other during my family’s trip East in June 2021. June 10 Papa, My lips and face are chapped, my hair stringy, and my legs sore from bracing myself against the railing of the … Continue reading Winds on the Atlantic
