2019 in Six Minutes
It was a year, wasn’t it?!
Category: memories
memories why am I telling you this?
Scars
“You have a lot of scars.” My son is standing next to me as I’m sitting on a truck-stop toilet, my pants bunched around my knees. He’s looking at my thigh. It’s extra pale in the fluorescent light. He is six years old and does not know what cellulite is, what ingrown hairs are — only that his mother’s legs are dimpled and marked in ways that his own skin, smooth and caramel colored, is…
memories the family
Admitted
This morning we learned that Richard’s father is in the hospital and has been for several days. His stepmother went to the ER today, too, and is being admitted, as soon as a bed comes open. They both have the flu, and his father has pneumonia and sepsis and a UTI on top of that. He was in the ICU for a couple of days before being moved to a regular room yesterday. Richard and…
holden I refuse to get old memories weight crazies why am I telling you this?
Saddle seat
We bought bikes. It was at my insistence, a desperate middle-aged Hail Mary to try to find some form of exercise that I don’t hate so that I don’t end up in a Little Rascal at Walmart before I’m forty. “Let’s get bikes for Christmas!” I told my husband back in October, when we were settling on the notion of not buying Christmas gifts for one another. He agreed, as he is wonderful and actually…
I hate/love nature memories relationships
The last days of Ditchcat
I started smelling it on Wednesday, at first in quick bursts when the wind blew: The sour, thick stench of death somewhere in the yard. I was down by the driveway gate, putting a trash bag in the bin, and I noticed it and thought ew, something smells dead and got on with my business. The next day, I smelled it again. I was on the deck, watering plants, and it hit me like a…
memories the family
Bad memory
My sister once convinced me to eat a crabapple from this tree in my grandmother’s yard. She told me it would taste good and I believed everything my big sister said. It did not taste good. It was remarkably terrible, actually. That’s not the bad memory I’m referring to, though. That’s one of many stories of her pranking me throughout my youth. The crabapple, the red onion she told me was red cabbage, the hot…
dreams memories why am I telling you this?
Boo
I wanted to write something about ghosts. Something about how when they show up in your dreams they steal rest from you all night long. Not the kinds of ghosts that wear sheets and chains or the kinds of spectral presences that populate spooky stories. I’m talking about the kind of ghosts that used to live large in your life but that you killed off, metaphorically speaking, so you could move on. About how when…
memories
Making a break
I once made a bindle and ran away from home up this road. I don’t remember what awful domestic injustice led to this action, or which cartoon convinced me I needed an actual bandana-tied-to-a-stick bindle to carry my things. I think I was around 6 or 7 and the day was waning but I started the trek up the gravel road next to our old house, toward the hog barn and grain bin, completely unsure…
creativity memories
Remember when I used to doodle on dummies during news meetings?
My trip down memory lane via Flickr has been epic tonight.
memories music
Remember that time I shot photos at the last White Stripes show ever?
We didn’t know it was the last one, of course.
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