When Debbie and I discovered she was pregnant with our third child, we had already successfully brought two children into our family, so we were confident we knew what was coming. We’d done this already, and though it wasn’t all singing and flowers, we were confident it would be routine, and in a few months we’d have special child number three. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Nonfiction’ Category
Our Home Birth
Monday, April 13th, 2009Ellusion
Saturday, March 28th, 2009following Naomi’s theme – I didn’t write this drunk, but I’m posting it after (amidst, really) celebrating my partner’s birthday. I made marinated chicken and asparagus and salad with raw beets, plus garlic bread. we decided to get the most out of our bottle of chardonnay, and drank it shots-style. pure class, over thisaway.
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
So, I’m drunk.
I realize this isn’t very ladylike of me. But the fact of the matter is, I love the taste of Jack and Coke, plus I love feeling the buzz of alcohol. So there it is. But I’m very drunk.
My good friend Jacky asked if he could be my drunk and dial this weekend. He quit his job, and was going to Las Vegas to sort of celebrate. I think he just needs to blow off steam. So I’ve been talking on the phone, and his drunkenness quite exceeds my own. I’ve been trying to make sure he’s okay, but frankly with both of us wasted off our asses, we’re having a hard time actually conveying meaningful thoughts. So I listen on the phone, and tell him to shut the fuck up every now and then so I can get a word in edgewise. A meaningless word.
I miss him. I miss my friend Justin as well. He’ll call every now and then, and we’ll chat and laugh and have fun on the phone. I’m going down next April for his wedding. I’m looking forward to it, cause I want to see him, and I want to see him get married. But he’s had such a hard life, and he’s having some difficulties in his relationship, and I don’t know what to say. I never know what to say. I just try to listen.
I’m so tired. I think I’ll give Jacky another call. See how he’s doing. I hope I hear from Justin tomorrow. I sent him a text. I miss him.
I miss my friends.
What I Did On My Holiday
Friday, March 27th, 2009
I love the smell of dish soap in the morning.
An Instance of Repeating
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009to continue with the sex theme, this one’s alternately titled Who I Did on my Summer Vacation (joking. sorta.).
An instance of repeating
when the world is only beginning
Strong coffee in the evening and a walk through the bookshelf of a stranger. He is too young for his grey hair, and he has been to Prague, and this Kundera, he’s Czech, isn’t he? We have already dreamed aloud together, and every step taken on common ground must surely bring us closer. I take the book home with me: heavy, even in its unbearable, unbeatable lightness.
Incarnation
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Incarnation
I. Rabbit
The first memory: yellow carpet of my bedroom in the duplex where we lived when I was five. I am sitting on the floor; I am wearing a short dress. There is something involving a dresser drawer and the wrapping paper (from a years-ago baby shower) lining the bottom of it, and there are carpet lines on my bare legs, and there is this necklace – the flatly glinting rabbit and the cheap, indelicate silver chain.
The Other Side of the Mountains
Monday, March 16th, 2009In the days of dust and river clams we left our home in search of Emerald cities. Brief, sporadic visits to red-haired aunts, old pictures, and gift shop posters told us of sparkling lakes, shining towers, Pike Place Market (rows of shining produce; dad’s perennial gravitation to the magic shop), the fountain (the nozzles of firemen’s hoses!), the boats, the piers, the aquarium, and the Olde Curiosity Shop, packed like brown sugar with people and t-shirts and sneakers and cameras on leashes around necks.
This was the mid ‘90’s. Home was hot cracked dirt. We girls were tan (brown little berries, my grandmother called us) and broad shouldered from daily swim practices. We were loud and running in the yard, begging for the grass to stay long; its tall waves made hiding places, secret homes for tiny people, rice paddies in Japan that we tended with care. We hung freshly tie-dyed shirts on the clothesline and watched the colors fly, flags of paint and vinegar. The shirts grew stiff with sun.
At the top of the Space Needle the wind was strong. My bangs, thick and brush-like, chlorine-killed in those days, stood straight up in exclamation. Side by side, parents and baby sister behind us, tie-dyed shirts, we grinned wild into the camera with the city reaching out, breathing in the strong water scent through flaring nostrils, open mouths. This was living! This was life!
