-
Anniversary Toast
On Friday, my husband and I will have been married 21 years. Last year, impatient (why wait for 25?) and feeling more than a little pleased with ourselves for having so well enjoyed our first two decades together, we threw a big party. This year, we’ll probably take the kids to the coast. But I’ve…
-
Spring recitals, then and now
♪♪♪♬♫♪♩♪♪♪♪♪♬♫♪♪♪♪♪♬♫♪♩ When I took piano lessons as a kid, recitals were a big deal. Memorized piece, new dress, public auditorium or church endowed with a good piano. The city arts center where my first teacher held her recitals contrasted with the dark and smelly living room where she gave lessons. My highly-organized second teacher’s home…
-
Some River Twice
Because it’s not the same river, right? But it’s a river all the same–another river, or the same pebbled bank on a different day, or the same water, further down stream. I recently participated in a writing workshop with Gary Soto–even better, I went as my daughter’s guest; a workshop spot was part of her…
-
May memories, Mayhap, May help
When I was little–four or five–we used to hang May Baskets from the doorknobs of elderly neighbors. My mother instigated this, of course, but I enjoyed filling the construction paper cones with garden flowers, placing the surprise, ringing the bell and running away. It’s not a tradition I ever tried to continue with my children.…
-
More remote, named places
Punta Delgada, Península Valdés I’ve been back in Oregon for a month and a half now, more or less (the precise day count seems unimportant) and, as usually happens with completed travel, the time away and the places visited–and, sadly, the people–seem increasingly remote, a little unreal, my own personal fairytale, once upon a time…
-
In search of lost pictures
A mysterious tech glitch having eaten a quantity of pictures off my memory card, I have tried to reconstruct what it was I saw, what I thought I wanted to remember. Snapping quick photos as a memory aid, it’s easy not to look carefully enough; many of the plants are lost to me now, vague…
-
Travel Journal (Peru, 1987)
Today, for the second time this week, I saw a hummingbird perched on one of the spindly maples by the jogging trail. They haven’t graced the white-flowering currants in my yard this spring the way they have in past years, so perhaps they’ve moved. The currants are nearly done blooming by now. Maybe it’s just…