The Discovery

She asked me twice what I wanted for dinner; which, in Vermont, really meant lunch.

“Anything is fine, Grandma.” I thought I was safe saying that, but didn’t know for sure since I had not spent much time with this woman.

Parents play a cruel trick on their children when they choose to live on the opposite coast.

A Look Back

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the church was that the purple carpet was gone, replaced by elegant cream-colored tiles. I hadn’t been in the church for four years and I almost missed the dated carpet in that awkward shade somewhere between lavender and purple.

A Moment of Freedom

When my daughter was younger, she just loved to acquire and pretend to care for a variety of unusual pets. When Sara was eight, she captured a “leaf bug,” or katydid. She was momentarily ecstatic and housed it in a mesh-covered box/carrier.

The New Americans

When we’d been back in Sacramento for five years, I mentioned to a friend that I needed to apply to have the children's citizenship changed from Canadian to U.S. (because they were both born in Canada).

Life and Death on the Wasanuri River

In 2007, my mother and I flew to Africa to join a “land tour,” which turned out to consist of 20 participants and 3 guides of mixed competency riding on a converted refuse hauler and rattling their way around Kenya. But once the shock wore off, we forgot about the “rustic” accommodations and the lack of flushable toilets (or any toilets) and surrendered ourselves to the adventure that lay ahead.

Because quite an adventure lay ahead!

The Tornado Strategy

My daughter, in the first grade, was a dreamy, unpredictable child, and it came out in quirky ways. 

Nothing I could really point to and say, “See! What an awful kid!” Still, she could be considerably annoying and was always easily distracted. It was a full-time job trying to keep her on track and I already had a full-time job.

Lost and Found

When I was fifteen, I earned my learner’s permit but couldn’t legally drive without an adult in the car. One night, my mother’s car broke down on the other side of town, and since no one else was available, my father took me with him to pick up the abandoned car.