When You Find Yourself Red-Faced and Hot at the Woodfire

In between sticky smores, sandy swimsuits, and splashes in the crisp Mississippi River headwaters, it washed off: the weight of everyday life. Hamburger hobo stews wrapped in tin foil oozed steaming carrot and potato juices. We smelled of wood fires and mosquito repellent. Hiking through bogs on wooden boardwalks, slapping mosquitoes, hypothesizing which “leaves of…

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Grab Your Ugly Socks!

With a clatter and a crash, the phone slipped off the treadmill dashboard, careened off the moving belt, and skidded to a stop in the carpet behind me. I glanced left and right. Lithe joggers ran in precise form, their arms knowing how to cycle in smooth arcs, not flailing wildly like mine. Photo Credit:…

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When Grief Stalks

Cinnamon coffeecake plunges high up my plastic fork while brown sugar topping flakes and tumbles from the top. Espresso grinders whir loud then fade to the music from overhead speakers. Three inch pink baby shoes glide by in a black stroller; purple sippy handles peak from a stroller’s corner. Wooden coffeehouse chairs scrape and clunk…

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