I am watching the final day of our vacation begin. The sun illuminates the eastern sides of the tree trunks as if the trees and the sun are conversing. The bay is serene, the water so unrippled it betrays nothing of the activity beneath: the...
It Will Be Hard To Leave
(This post is a day late because yesterday the internet was down!) The last few -weeks have been hellish in this country. We’ve seen the worst of human nature on display, not only in the shooters, but in many of the people responding to the...
Objects and Orangutans
Today I am packing for a ten-day trip to the San Juan Islands where my husband and I will be writing, kayaking, biking, beach-walking, and kicking back while we watch seals and otters, and maybe Orcas, frolicking in the bay. Because we are...
Battling Cancer, Living with ALS
My beloved friend Charlene was recently diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. A number of years ago she underwent a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy because she had the BRCA gene. These operations are known to radically reduce the chances...
How Much Self Reliance is Necessary?
Despite having lived on the West Coast for decades, I remain a New Englander at my core. Born in Boston and raised in a small town only miles from Walden Pond, I was steeped in New England history and ideas. I read the work of writers like...
The Treasures of Spring Cleaning: Tell Them What They Mean to You
The arrival of spring reliably brings with it the urge to clean up, throw things out, and bring order to the accumulated dust and detritus of indoor living. The urge comes to me in unpredictable waves and must be acted upon immediately before it...
The Power of Birth Stories
I have not met my seven-week-old grandniece, Radley, in the flesh, but I can’t get enough of watching videos of her squirming and cooing, flailing her tiny limbs around and making mini fists. The first of her generation in our family, she is...
What Do You Have To Teach?
A few years ago, not long before the pandemic began, I made the decision to stop teaching and become a full-time writer. I was a little hesitant to give up my affiliation with the university and its creative writing program, but I also knew I was...
Gray Matter Boulevard
My curiosity has always been hitched to the human mind. That is why I’m a fiction writer. As such, I have always been somewhat solitary. However, when the pandemic coincided with the onset of my ALS, which robbed me of speech and made talking...
Pollyanna Sounds the Alarm
People frequently ask my husband—and sometimes they ask me—if I am really as upbeat about my ALS as I appear to be in my posts. When I woke this morning I was asking myself that question too. The answer is yes. My posts express as honestly as I...