“Merry Christmas!” She stood at my dorm room door with a gift in her hand. It was an unexpected surprise and delight. My friend wanted me to open it right at that moment. I tore off the wrapping paper and there was a book. It was a book about loneliness. She looked at me, curiously […]
I know it’s coming, but I’m not prepared. Fill in the blank with “it.” It could be dinnertime each day. I’m not prepared to answer the daily question, “What’s for dinner?” “It” could be the next difficult season up ahead, or it could the wildest season of joy. Why do I assume it will […]
Math has always been my hardest subject. I still count on my fingers and only know my times table by rote. If my life depended on solving a quadratic equation, I would be absent in the body and present with the Lord. But no math vexes me quite like the math of friendship with my […]
Now that the kids have grown up and I have separated from my husband—and moved out as well—my loneliness has no place to hide. In this quiet little apartment, my loneliness can no longer be ignored. It can’t hide behind the busyness of taking care of a home and family. It can’t be tucked away […]
I am alone And its ok. For 30 years I had four breathing beings tugging at me, (*five if you count my husband **six if you count my mother who lived with us for ten years) at my sleeve, at my knee, at times at my throat). ((at my throat because three of the beings […]
I know what it must feel like to be a ghost. I am haunting the life I used to live but haven’t moved on yet, hanging out on the fringes of what I once called mine. I watch everyone around me go about their days as they always have but I am on the outside […]
I should get bonus points when I surprise my friend Shoshana: she’s remarkably unflappable. If I’d told her I was getting a giant bat tattoo on my behind, she’d probably nod and say, “Oh, interesting.” But the other day on the phone, when I told her I love it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to […]
There can be a loneliness in reading, because it is such a solitary act. Even in talking about books, it can be hard to accurately describe their affect, because how can soul-deep language be reduced to mere words? There can be an aloneness in reading, too, in that one does it to be alone, […]
The last few months of my life have been an unexpected time-out. I’ve taken a (somewhat) self -induced sabbatical. This past July I lost my job. Two months later after nervously taking another job, I was unemployed again. Somewhere between all this employment drama, my grandmommy died—and that’s only a very small sampling of the […]
I remember a show where a magician betrays his sacred order, and with a heavy shadow disguising his face, spills the secrets of his magic. The secrets of marriage are far more closely guarded. You won’t catch many people admitting to how much sex they have or don’t have. Most wives wisely caption their social […]
We have been experiencing a bit of a thaw here in the Midwest, so the air has spring smell about it. The mud, the warmth, the melted snow, have fooled us all into thinking that spring is here. Growing up in Alaska, we generally had one thaw per year, in late April. Unlike other places […]
I pass by the holy water font without pausing, fifty-three years of reflex gone. I slide into a pew tucked in the back corner of the cavernous church, an arm’s reach from the flickering votive candles. An arm’s reach from the nearest exit. It was not always thus between you and I. I spent hours […]
I sat there, sipping my mocha, while our daughter rolled a ball across the floor, back and forth, and periodically tried to escape from the little corner we had planted ourselves in, waiting for them to call the flight. I took a picture or two of father and daughter, grinning, holding each other close. And […]
Why does using my words terrify me so much? Let’s start out with a confession: Twitter terrifies me. I got my handle a few years ago. The day my friend Melissa explained to me how she manages her twitter account, makes lists, what she posts, and what a hashtag is, my heart thudded in my […]