TRAINS I consider Flagstaff, Arizona as the town where I grew up, the second time. When I left Detroit and all of its big, and its loud, and its chill-you-to-the-bone winters, for Anne Marie's first relocation adventure, I didn't know how hard I would fall in love. That little town had me, hook, line, and... Continue Reading →
Dang. Life keeps happening. And weather. After days and days of weirdly warm southwest weather, winter appears to have remembered this part of the map. She’d been drowsing in the memory of autumn's lush colors, no doubt. Remembering the heavy scent of the dying oak leaves, the heady fragrance of creosote in the breeze. All... Continue Reading →
Time for a little nostalgia, and I can't look back at one item, without reminiscing about the other. Thongs, the kind we used to wear on our feet, that evolved into something else, well, the word did anyway, and blood. Bleeding to be exact. Menses. Messy menses. And the whole bit. So here we go. When... Continue Reading →
It made for a pretty sweet parenting pleasure to arrive home to a house where I could see the vacuum wheel tracks running across the carpet like directional signs saying 'This way to clean!' And to smell the fresh red chile pork in the kitchen. 'Are we at your mom's?' I asked the girls' dad.... Continue Reading →
Bad Breaks We’ve all suffered a broken heart of one sort or the other. Some that seem reparable and some, not so much. From the go-on-a-few-dates-with-a-hottie-who-dumps-you after the holidays kind of broken heart, to being dumped by the gem you dated for a few years who leaves you quite suddenly. And you find yourself withering... Continue Reading →
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” So, on one of the first nights of my first job, outside of babysitting or cleaning houses, when I was all of fourteen years old, I was trapped inside a walk-in cooler by the chef at a popular restaurant in Detroit. A... Continue Reading →
As I prepare to travel to Michigan, the place I grew up, the first time, and the place I call home, I think about this. This calling of home. What makes Michigan my home is those twenty years I lived there, barely a third of my life. Yet it is a place drilled into my... Continue Reading →
Stress is an odd bear. Ferocious. Hungry. But there must be some perception of cuteness about it. For we treat it like a teddy bear. Take it to bed with us. Cuddle it. Hold it when we wake up in the dark. Share it with friends. Family. It is always there for us. Whenever we... Continue Reading →
The eye doctor said with ease, expertise, and very little drama, "You have a bug in your eye. It's part of a wing, probably from a beetle." While he is an ophthalmologist, and not an entomologist, I doubted his diagnosis. Not about the foreign object, that was evident from several weeks of feeling exactly like... Continue Reading →
I decided at the beginning of 2017 that I would finally make the move I had been talking about making since I became an empty-nester. I would leave Flagstaff. Find a smaller newer home. Go on a residential adventure, so to speak. That was five years ago. The plan moved from the back and then... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 