Essays
WORC
When I was fifteen, I walked up to the Whataburger on Seminole Boulevard at the edge of our lower middle class neighborhood in Seminole, Florida and applied for a carhop position. My family had moved into a rental house a few months earlier and I needed a job. My stepfather Ted had recently retired after…
Read MoreA Daughter’s Journey
Often in the afternoons my father will open a cabinet, and with his gnarled index finger trail the spines of binders filled with catalogued DVDs until he finds one he wants to share with me that day.
Read MoreApple Strudel
The January before her death in 2013, my mother Susi came to Florida to visit me. She was living in my half-sister Jackie’s Colorado home and wanted to get out of the cold and snow for a few weeks. During her visit, we both worked hard to be kind to one another. COPD and emphysema limited her activity; a trip to the grocery store sent her to bed for the afternoon. So we dallied over lunches, settled under the oak trees in the backyard and looked out over the lake.
Read MoreThe Stranger
Here is a photo of us. I am sitting in her lap; our heads are close together. We are both smiling. No, I am not smiling; I am grinning from ear to ear, holding a black Fury horse with wheels on its feet and a Joey doll on its back. A gift from this woman who says she is my mother. It is Christmas Eve, my fifth one.
Read MoreSleepless in Iceland
My brain registers an insistent ringing as I groan and roll to the wall in defense. The room is dark as night within light-blocking drapes. I can’t seem to remember where I am. Then… it’s my phone that’s ringing and we’re in a pristine Icelandic guesthouse, the Sulur.
Read MoreFifteen Thousand Miles
The Taiko drum starts. Thump thump thump. The chanting begins, a breakneck liturgy in an insistent monotone. The timpani accentuates. Clang clang clang.
Read MoreWriting the Truth
The email from my father began: It is with a heavy heart that I write this… I quickly scanned the German words. My knees buckled as my world plummeted to a depth that had me gasping for air. I understood immediately I had overstepped my writing boundaries.
Read MoreMaxhutte Lost
“Hello, can you help me please,” I implore in my bad German as I skid up to a suited gentleman at a bus stop. He appears startled, and backs further onto the sidewalk. I’m on my Aunt Sieglinde’s garden bike, a sturdy three-speed with no athletic grace and a wire basket on its handlebars.
Read MoreChronometry
We walk, my age-deaf dogs and I. The street light throws my shadow ahead of us. It moves lithely along, stretched slim. In the dark, I can be young and pretty again instead of old and …handsome. My softness is gone now, like my dogs’ hearing …
Read MoreFinding Walter
We stand outside Building 5 of the towering apartment complex, my German cousin Michael and I, shifting from foot to foot, gawping. At the black and once-white bricks in need of washing. At the door that’s locked.
Read More