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When I am forty nine years old, I will still fit into my size two jeans. I will look hot in my reading glasses. I will know more about wine, history and Latin than I do now. I will be slow to speak[…]

This book shelf is a crazy mix of random paperback novels and obscure hardcover biographies from the 60’s. No matter how many times I stare at this shelf, I always seem to find a selection I hadn’t seen before, and so I pull it odown and thumb through its crumbly pages. Then little bugs skitter across the letters and I sort of freak out, and that’s the end of that. But there is one bug-free book I come back to again and again, a selection of Thoreau’s writings accompanied by photographs by Eliot Porter.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

A visit to Grandpa’s house means dog spit, hair and barking, Coors Light, cheese crackers, giant weeds, root beer, chips and salsa, theological debate, playing in the sandbox, grilled sausage and peppers, a walk to the playground, indecent desserts and a sleepy ride home.

Six years ago today I sat next to my mother’s hospital bed and held her hand, listening for her final breath. I watched the spiky glowing line of her heart monitor flatten into a solid neon smoothness. After she was gone, I loosened the neck of her hospital gown and gently stroked her still-warm belly, criss-crossed by the stretch marks I had made from within her. When I was twelve years old, she wrote this letter to me, just before heading into the surgery that would define the rest of her life. She was not sure she would survive the operating table, and wanted to make certain that I knew just how much she loved me. I keep this note in my underwear drawer. I take it out and read it on days when I need her.