Most think that the starling is a common bird, like me. Boring actually. Ordinary in color and size. Few know that she has steady feet and the ability to mutate her vocalizations to her surroundings mimicking the shrill of a car alarm or the murmur of human speech for both gain and protection. Her plume, mostly brown, has a subtle, iridescent sheen.
Read MoreIn my 51st year I begin to see how much my hands look like yours. My knuckles are thick and ache from holding on with ferocity to something invisible. Something already gone. To anything really to stop the spinning. And my veins burgeon with gelatinous hurt that is taking forms which no longer resemble its origin. That pain rests here as a silent reminder visible to the world.
Read MoreShuffling and muttering I bring my house back to normalcy after the Armageddon of Christmas and the New Year. This task holds a melancholy push/pull of hold on and let go. Candy cane wrappers tucked into sofa cushions. Pine needles lining the grout. Boxes and bags and fudge no longer suitable for eating. A fridge full of this, that and yesterday.
Read MoreThey grab, poke and tangle, these tricky vines; wound around essential organs ~ like the heart ~ with a chokehold.
They aren’t like the luggage that is just too weighty.
The luggage that you can simply put down.
Or even like the chattels you once cherished that you can gently kiss goodbye and set free like a paper boat on the reservoir at sunset.
Read MoreThings aren’t just things.
They carry with them a weight and a flavor. In my life, more often heavy and bitter than light and sweet; but memorable nonetheless. And I cannot touch things without remembering the feelings associated with them.
The soft satin trim on a baby blanket as I tuck a childhood poem into a box for Grad School. The pang of panic as I stroke the edge of the rocking horse that added that scar to a forehead. That one I move into the pile to sell.
Read MoreIf I lean in and peer closely enough I can still see her past the crow’s feet and time.
A tiny pocket miracle with sponge-like brown eyes drinking in the world as if it is Kool-Aid.
The latitude of her smile is geographically incorrect as it spills past her cheekbones and her ears and bounces light around the room at the tail end of her laugh which fills the air like happy wind chimes.
Read More“I had no idea you were such a baseball fan!”
This is what people often say when they hear about my quest to see a baseball game in every one of the 30 stadiums across North America.
“No. Not really.” is my response.
Plain and simple.
Read MoreI drove due South for a piece where Kansas kisses Missouri. I landed just north and a little west of Joplin where a twister summarily leveled an entire community in 2011. Once I hit the Bourbon County line I lost all cell reception. I doubt this is a coincidence. The road was straight with more dips and interest than its neighbor. If lucky, two lanes to pass the 18 wheelers. It was peppered with scrap metal trucks, two-toned cars with replacement doors and Chevy’s towing silver Airstream trailers carrying both rust and American Flags for the Memorial Day Weekend.
Read MoreThere’s a lot of God and sex in Missouri. The billboards tell me so. They advertise misspelled pleasures and repentance in equal measure at approximate 200 yard intervals. They lull you into the lazy pace that seems to inhabit the sleepful walkers who live here. Towns are named Peculiar and Tightwad and Bland as if to foreshadow who you might next meet. Overalls never went out of style; and bushy beards too cumbersome for the early May heat are back in.
Read MoreI somehow knew there would be a point in time that I would become my grandparents. But, I didn’t know it would be so instantaneous or so severe; or that it would be my maternal grandfather vs. my paternal grandmother that would be the chosen one to model. After all, I’m cubic, dark and broody like dad’s side of the family; not tall, lanky and anxious like mom’s. But suddenly, I have arrived.
Read MoreListen To Your Mother is a series of staged readings about motherhood done in 41 cities across the United States and Canada in the weeks before Mother’s Day each year.
Local writers in each of these cities write short pieces about motherhood and then audition for the opportunity to be cast. My writing was one of only 13 chosen for Rochester, New York, for the 2016 season.
The Rochester topics this year varied: funny stories of mothers who were bold characters in this world, the acceptance required to raise a transgender child, the raw pain of post-partum depression, parenting a tween as she finds her way and you lose your own, cultural definitions of motherhood, coming to terms with your own mother’s death when you know she will never meet your unborn child, the day-to-day insecurities we all feel about the little things and whether or not we are ‘good enough’, choosing non-traditional paths in life, and so many more.
Read MoreYesterday I stood and spoke in a room that swallowed my voice. Not in the “I am going to snuff you” way to which I have become so accustomed in this life. But rather in a way that felt like “more”.
A soul whisper.
Hoarse from longing.
More.
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