The bluebird boy uses his beak to carry bugs and caterpillars for his nestlings and haul away nestling excrement deposited in fecal sacs. He keeps a tidy nest. The female does all this and has a uterus to hold her eggs, laying one a day. The Monarch butterfly carries fertilized eggs in her vagina to […]

It’s my safe spot now. I don’t love the dark walnut wood, but I love memories of climbing in bed between my grandparents as a child. After grandpa died, Mom slept in this bed with Grandma Margaret for a few years.  When Mom sold Grandma’s furniture thirty years ago, I asked for this bedroom set.  […]

Two little girls stand in an open field, close to each other but not touching. I’m the straight-haired girl with glasses, 7 years old, wearing a wool coat with plaid trim. The dark-skinned girl wears overalls with a white hat covering her black curls. My smile is strained while my hands search for the safety […]

In the American Brahman Bookstore in Ithaca, NY in the late 1960s, a group drawn to the store and teacher learned meditation sitting on lumpy mismatched cushions. At home, Vic and I committed to sitting in meditation for 15 minutes a day. We opened the window a crack to hear the sounds of splashing water […]

I walk to my husband Vic’s cairn in the forest to honor his life and death. Along the way, I peek in the nesting boxes to see if the bluebird eggs have hatched. I pick lupines near the trail and remember how the fields bloomed with purple joy the day he died. I lay flowers […]

Rushing toward Strong Hospital in 2008, I call the pulmonologist, the oncologist, the cardiologist, and our family doctor. “Should we put your husband on a ventilator?” they ask me. “Can you give him chemo after he nearly died from the last one?” I ask. “No.” “Can he survive without chemo?” “Not with two kinds of […]