Category: writing Page 7 of 32

Everyone Dreads a Sequel

By

On February 25, 2022

In writing

History is repeating itself, but this time its echo is all too familiar.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this week brings with it a chilling, global sensation. There is no longer peace across Europe, and from our wealthy, ensconced villas in the States, there seems to be very little we can do about it beyond lobbing sanctions or offering a milquetoast saber rattle.

This new war–a term I’m still wrapping my head around–offers up another curious generational fold for we baby X-ers (or, conversely, geriatric millennials, another term demanding grave pause). Russia as warmongering adversary–sounds familiar, right?

I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I knew Mikhail Gorbachev’s name as a kid, and Boris Yeltsin’s. I studied in schools that had window shade-style maps with “U.S.S.R.” printed broadly across their northeastern quadrants. In my memory, the country was a deep shade of red.

Generationally speaking, I occupy a sweet spot in this story. If you’re much older than I am, you probably practiced “Duck and Cover” type school drills and lived with a low-level humming anxiety, waiting for the bright flash from Moscow. If you’re a decade younger than me, you’ve lived your life in a post-Cold War channel, one defined by the wealthy confidence portrayed by a strong America guiding another defeated nation into the democratic herd. That small span of time in the middle, my group, has a foot on both sides.

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Keep paddling.

By

On January 31, 2022

In writing

Thomas, my boy:

I am writing this from the kitchen of our new house in Sylva, and I’m writing it exactly one month later than I intended. This letter, the sort that I write to you and your sisters exactly once every three years, is somehow overdue, but I feel that if you look back on this time—and goodness, what memories you’ll have of it going forward—you may very well understand.

The kitchen is a good enough place for writing because Mom bought a trio of barstools after she dropped you off at your new school, the one you started four weeks ago after break. Millie is stretched out on a bathroom mat spread out in the den floor; it’s comically too small, but somehow it ended up there, and it’s the right size for our young pup.

There are still boxes and boxes left to unpack and a couch and a bed down in the detached garage that we don’t know what to do with. We are still learning how to pull into and out of the steep driveway without scraping the bottoms of our cars. 

All of which is to say, your ninth birthday fell in a maelstrom of life. In the last 80 days, the world you’ve spent your entire life in was turned upside down, then packed away, then upended once more. 

It’s my fault.

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Waiting for Grief

By

On December 13, 2021

In writing

I find myself staring at a bag of dog food.

We buy it in thirty pound sacks, this median-grade kibble, a nutritional blend made especially for senior pups. It’s cheaper to buy on Amazon, and following some unknown interval, the hockey puck wizard device in the kitchen will light up, and I will ask it what’s wrong, and it will reply nothing, nothing serious–just maybe it’s time that you bought another thirty-pound bag of dog food? Shouldn’t we do that?

And more often than not I agree, and soon the gray, boxy van stops in front of the house, and someone schleps a thirty-pound box to our front porch. I break down the boxes and slide them under the Wagoneer to catch little drips of oil.

The most recent bag sits in the basement about two-thirds full. Around the corner, draped across two memory foam dog beds, our oldest pooch, Taylor, quietly naps, her breath slow and measured, the kind that comes with precious, deep sleep. There are pregnant pauses between exhale and inhale.

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