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Where I’ve Been: Ireland Edition
What’s the German word for expressing profound sorrow for having disappeared for two years, only to appear out of the blue at the start of August 2020 to wave hello, announce a pregnancy, and regale one’s audience with stories of (somewhat) recent adventures? Linguists of the world, get back to me, would you? The answer to the question of where I’ve been is both simple and multidimensional. But then, what in life cannot likewise be summed up in such a manner? As Whitman said, we do indeed contain multitudes. In fact, the entire poem from which that quote was boosted is perhaps fitting for this moment. Song of Myself, 51…
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A letter to you, little one…
It was at about the 10-week mark that your dad started asking me if I could feel you moving yet. I would remind him that you were still quite small and that milestone was likely some weeks away. But he kept asking every couple of days; he was just excited. We heard your heartbeat for the first time in June; it was fast and strong. You danced around a bit, all your then-1.5 inches of growing body. The ultrasound tech gushed about how cute you were, and even though you were really just a little bean of thing on a black-and-white screen, I admit you were pretty cute. Sorry I…
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The zucchini that ate my cottage house
Is there a Guinness Book of World Records authority in the house, because today I must tell tale of a zucchini that attempted to eat mine. It started, as I’m sure all good stories do, with the Herculean task of hauling hundreds of pounds of dirt up a hill to my mother’s garden to a just-constructed planter box that would soon be filled with said dirt and a variety of vegetable seeds. What I didn’t know about this dirt was that it was composed of magical properties the likes of which result in killer zucchini. Were I a more studious reader of Greek epics, I probably would have seen that…
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Pocket Postcards, vol. 4
Dear Instant Film: You make documenting summer hikes + adventures a real dreamy event. Instead of adding another 1,000 photos to my already overtaxed library of fancy phone images, you allow me to collect those special moments on paper and in hand. A tangible record of this season helps keep its chaotic nature — which frankly seems rather determined to hijack all things with no regard for my wishes — a little more at bay. I’m grateful to you for that. To July: We hardly knew you. Seriously, where did you go? Is it really August’s turn already? Can we talk about this? To the recent rash of 90+ degree…
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Have Truck, Will Travel
I had a dream as a young teenager. It went like this: (1) Buy a used, purple pickup truck. (2) Travel the world. I think this dream first kicked in around my 13th or 14th year. I can’t quite remember where it originated, or why I landed on a pickup truck instead of an RV, Volkswagen van, or some Steinbeck-approved vehicle, but it persisted even as I crossed the threshold into my thirties. For more than half my life I’ve carried this dream around, and though I’ve grown up (mostly…I still eat an inordinate number of chicken fingers), began my career, got married, started a business, and had the privilege…
