The swollen sun amplified the turquoise, yellow and orange storefronts of Oaxaca in December. I was thirty-two, and along with my maternal relatives, had rented a villa with a central courtyard, where we gathered daily. I was still under the impression that I had the perfect family. My grandfather sat on a tall wooden chair […]
I became fixated on the final minutes of his life. Was he resolute, calm, maybe even liberated, as he hovered between life and death? I imagined him swimming to the surface after eons of holding his breath. Astonished by the details of the moment. The vanilla smell of pine bark, the peeling paint on the […]
December sunlight sliced through the French doors and fell in a swath on my kitchen island. Home from taking the kids to school, I dropped my keys next to the sink and inhaled the silence of the empty house. Another day of rushing Rowan through his morning routine had me on edge. I regretted yelling […]
Randy’s mood mimicked the daylight. A steep nosedive in November followed by five months of depression. He barely left the bed. The heavy shape of his body imprinted on the mattress. I imagined a chalk outline. His electrical business had withered to nothing. I mustered up as much sympathy as I could bear, which wasn’t […]
My husband looked roughly the same, aside from the unkempt hair and the three-day stubble, but something inside his brain was unraveling. At first, I didn’t realize it, so I only half listened when he said he wanted to rent a backhoe and landscape our yard. During our decade of marriage, he had imagined and […]
Call it a biological directive or a spiritual urge, but for as long as I could remember I had wanted a baby. This yearning lived somewhere beyond rational thought, beyond societal pressure or family obligations. It was drawn into the blueprint of my identity. When I met Randy, Jeri advised me to ask him if […]