As I was wheeled into surgery last month, I had one regret. I have a will and an advance directive, but no letter to my survivors with my last words to comfort and instruct them. I’ve been working on it ever since. I’ll probably write…

Not long ago, my husband liberated a nice bookcase from his home office and put it in the kitchen, and already it’s jam-packed with cookbooks. I love cookbooks. I’ve got tomes on Thai food, Indian, Midwestern (whatever that is – it was a gift), baking,…

There are many perks to my fabulous job. I get to help doctors and nurses save lives. I get to buy new books, some of which I read myself. (Health memoirs are my weakness.) I get to keep things nice and tidy, a propensity that…

July 12 is going to be a big day for me. I’m going to travel to Iowa City the day before with my husband, have a fabulous meal, wander through Prairie Lights, and report to the University of Iowa Hospital for (gulp) surgery. I’ll spare…

Last week I allowed a neurologist to stab me in the head, face, neck and shoulders 31 times. Okay, maybe “stab” is overly dramatic. What she actually did was give me 31 shots of poison. There, now. Doesn’t that sound better? As a long-time host…

Here I am in Bayfield, Wisconsin, again, on what my husband likes to call our Annual Writer’s Block Retreat. That’s meant ironically, because he usually comes home with a sheaf of new songs and the start (or ending) of a new play, and I manage…

I’ve got a confession to make. It’s really shameful and embarrassing. Here it is: Even though I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English, I’ve never read Jane Eyre, nor anything else by the Bronte clan. Despite all those years of reading,…

It was dark and glossy, the color of coffee, and when she plaited it in braids, she could sit on them. My mother’s hair at 19 must have been something to see. Most of the time, she pinned it around her head, ever the practical…

It’s been spring for almost a month as I sit down to write this, but the sky is full of snow. It falls furiously on my sprightly daffodils. It lands in our new bird bath, the one we had to buy when last week’s hailstorm…

Blame it on the Chili Cheese Fritos. On our way from Dubuque to Ann Arbor for yet another visit to the Michigan Extreme Headache Institute, we’d pulled over at a rest stop to, you know, rest. It was two in the afternoon Iowa time, three…

I Under my pallid forehead, The only moving thing Was the arc of the headache.   II I was of two minds, Like a head In which there are two kinds of pain.   III The headache drilled in the winter chill. It was an…

That February the white sofa was my gurney, my plinth, my bier. Laid low by a headache no doctor could define or ease, sick to death of the bed upstairs, I stayed in my favorite reading place even though I could not read. The sun’s…

Today God is a girl named Sarah with a headache. Her eyes are killing her. She leans in the doorway of the green room, where we wait to see the doctors every morning, the opposite of rounds but still that’s what they call it. Something…

When the doctor . . . asked me if my pain felt like pins and needles, I said: “No, it’s more like rubbing against a hot driveway impregnated with broken glass – ” and [he] . . . said, “Oh, right, you’re the poet.” –…

I’ve been thinking about retirement lately. Not that I’m ready to turn in my resignation, sit in a conference room handing out cake, or activate my 403(b) just yet. It’s just that some of my older friends are making noises about calling it quits, and…

As I write this, the Oscars have just been handed out, and “The King’s Speech” has won Best Picture, a prize it richly deserves. Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Helena Bonham Carter were superb, as well as the director and screenwriter. I love the scene…

Writing poems isn’t easy. Getting them published is ridiculous. You look for places that publish poetry, send them out, remembering to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope, even if you don’t want them back, and then wait. Sometimes you wait six months to find out their…

You’ve no doubt heard about the Tiger Mother controversy. Either you’ve read excerpts or seen its attractive author interviewed – more like grilled – on some talk show or other. You’ve heard about the death threats, and the voices of support, including those of her…

Two weeks ago I was forcibly made a member of a Facebook group. I didn’t know this could happen, and I also didn’t know this group existed. But it was okay with me. The group is called “West High Reunion,” and as soon as I…

There is a gigantic billboard on Highway 151 between Dubuque and Madison that kills me every time I see it. Its message is simple: “Call Your Parents.” My response, though unspoken, is always the same: Oh, how I wish I could. I still remember the…