Tag Archives: kindness
When you can
If you could, you would feed the birds of Kyiv, of Mariupol, the pipits and larks, the warblers and wagtails lost in the suffocating skies over scorched trees in which they once slept and nested. If you could, you would shelter the martens and voles, the hares and dormice who fled cratered homes, the incendiary […]
Fruitcake weather
Truman Capote is best known for In Cold Blood, the chilling account of a Kansas farm family’s 1959 murder that birthed a new form of journalism. But at this time of year, he is remembered for A Christmas Memory, a short story that recalls his little-boy life with a distant cousin, a woman in her sixties with […]
My WalMart romance
I have a secret relationship, one whose particulars would, in some other context, be scandalous. As things are, we could scarcely be more different. His name is Barry, and he is long married in the traditional heterosexual way. I am a lesbian who — caught off guard by the right to wed — neglected to find […]
Donkey
Am I embarrassing myself? A reasonable question: I’d just posted a poem that invoked love, loss, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and included a joke about sex. I cannot count the ways that might be bad. Poetry is new territory for me. It arose from a desire for something freer: language liberated from […]
Happy ending
This story begins as too many do these days, another reminder of the human spirit in fundamental darkness: ignorance, meanness, alienation. But unlike those big stories — driven by bellicose world leaders with little intelligence and less heart — this tiny tale is redeemed by finer aspects of the human spirit: understanding, compassion, inclusion. Its […]
My Walmart romance
I have a secret relationship, one whose particulars would, in some other context, be scandalous. As things are, we could scarcely be more different. His name is Barry, and he is long married in the traditional heterosexual way. I am a lesbian who — caught off guard by the right to wed — neglected to find […]
Burgled, or the ax gets returned. Eventually.
Recently, I was the victim of a crime, which I discovered only after giving the perp a few dollars, a hug and all the goodwill I had to spare that day. What he left me in exchange is this story. I was sitting in my basement with my cats, watching a little afternoon TV, when I noticed […]
Disruptive
I felt deflated as I left the theater after seeing Jackie, which depicts the First Lady’s experience in the days surrounding her husband’s assassination. My mood was less a reflection of the film’s quality than the era it depicted: a decade of collective hope unraveling, excruciating at the time and ever painful in memory. I turned 5 […]
Seeing each other
The encounter lasted perhaps 30 seconds; I am unlikely ever to see again any of the people involved. Yet it has stayed with me as a reminder of the importance of small kindnesses. I was out for a Sunday morning bike ride and happened to pass a couple of equally casual cyclists, headed the other […]
Meditatio Ephemera 
Happy Birthday, Everyone! :)
I don’t know about you, but when I get birthday notifications about Facebook friends, a small space opens in my brain, which begins to tread water in a sad sort of perplexed way, wondering if I actually know this person — “know” not in the Biblical sense, but “know” in the ordinary, pre-social media sense […]