PUmpkin Eater

Touchtown: don’t get upset. Touchtown isn’t related to football, or pedophelia. It’s what they called a children’s area at the Kansas City Zoo. The “touch” was the touch of scruffy goats and bushy sheep. The sound was that of bleating, and the look was of red capped gumball machines dispensing pellets of generic feed, intended […]

passage

“It’s the fourth quarter,” my aunt said. We had eaten pizza, and now we were sitting on family heirloom dining room chairs, around a big table. “Death is never pretty,” my uncle said. And that felt truthful. My sister said she regretted so much not having children. We got updates on the addict, the pregnancies. […]

End

We packed up and cleaned out my dad’s office, ending his legal career and small business ownership of 47 years, the people in and out of the doors were his children, family friends, and a colleague of 40 years, and a wife, and an ex-wife. All my life dad’s office existed, a third place where […]

start & finish

I witnessed the beginning and end of a nun’s life last week. At the monastery I regularly visit, they had a transfer in, who did a slightly revised Final Vows (as she was already a nun, but with a different order), and the parts of a nun’s funeral, from reception of her cremains to burial […]