There we stood, looking out the windows of a house that had everything our current house did not – fireplace, bathrooms on each floor, a deck with a view. Most of all, it had a private yard. Our house on Wood Street was a sweet…
Big bad changes are afoot in my old neighborhood. Dismay has led me to some strange places, including a children’s picture book, a local history text, and a 2009 Pixar movie. The picture book is Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House. Published in 1942, it…
When my husband and I went house shopping years ago, each of us had a mental checklist. Bob wanted a spot on the main floor for his weighty electronic keyboard. He was tired of lugging it up and down stairs for every music gig. I…
Many years ago, I had a brush with homelessness. I knew I had a home to return to, but sofa-diving for three weeks was pretty uncomfortable. My first graduate degree was finished, and my roommate had departed. Without Jane in the apartment, I couldn’t afford…
My college boyfriend was rich. Or let me put it another way – he came from a rich family. Just because “your daddy’s rich,” to take line from “Summertime,” doesn’t mean you’ve done a darn thing to deserve those tennis lessons or that Mercedes parked…
After retiring from a column-writing gig lasting eleven years and yielding over 300 personal essays, I find I still have something to say. My thoughts range far and wide, and occasionally deep, on subjects including being an Iowan who misses Colorado; surviving marital violence; raising an amazing daughter and an equally amazing son; being justifiably angry about the world “these days;” writing poetry and plays; wondering if I’ll get Alzheimer’s like my mom and her two brothers; wanting to write about my twin granddaughters without sounding all Hallmark-y; fixing OCD-ish food; making sense of pants that come in shorts / crops / ankle-grazing / bootcut; being a librarian in public, academic, archival, and medical libraries; waiting 46 years to attend my high school reunion; having a gorgeous garden I can’t take care of; seeing a shaman; loving good men despite all the bad ones; and trying to wrest a little joy from life despite an 11-year-and-counting chronic migraine.