A story about how things matter. Photographs can help you remember things, but objects make you feel things. The connection is not obvious as in a photo. You have to work a little bit to remember the significance and conjure…
It’s a feeling I know very well. It’s not a bad feeling if you know home is not far and your directions are sure. You can put up with the cold because comfort is waiting and you are sure of…
If you know me, you’ve heard my story of being everywhere but home when I was growing up. Military Schools, full time sleep-away kid-sitters, summer camps. It was a weird blend of disadvantaged and privileged running side by side. The…
Every kitchen should have a clock. Up on the wall, over the sink or maybe over the entry door. They give us the time of day but also they keep watch. I don’t like the crazy kind, cats with moving…
Between 10 and 4. That’s my favorite time to be behind the wheel. At 10pm the world is shutting down. At 4am it’s beginning to stir again. In between, I have the world to myself. It’s never about wandering, that’s…
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best idea. 10 year old me, already on the verge of being unmanageable, sent to board with a woman and her two young daughters. But my mother, needing some place to park me 24*7*365…
Oh, we were pissed. Never mind that we were going to see a show in what is arguably the best and most iconic outdoor performance space in the country. This was the annual mid-summer concert outing for Camp Da-Ro. I…
She’d been going through the box that had come in the mail from his unit. It had taken several weeks and by this time she was numb to the idea that their only son, indeed their only child was gone.…
“If you screw up a dish bad enough, just serve it anyway and call it ‘Chicago Style’.” – Anonymous “Why are you so angry?” My much younger co-worker, whom I generally admire asked me. We were in a chat group…
A wooden duck. A tin man paddling a canoe. Photographs, a clock, a plate from China, a train set. They all mean something. They’re more than just material stuff. When I look at these things synapses fire, memories flood. So…