My ex-brother-in-law is a poisonous person. He’s an E.N.T. and plastic surgeon. Think of every surgeon stereotype… That’s right, he’s all of them. Cheated on ex-wife (my sister) with a nurse. Check. Treats supposed underlings with utter disrespect. Check. Obsessed with amassing material wealth. Check. Has a complete disregard for anything or anyone involved in supposedly non-prestigious pursuits. … [Read more…]
I came across this poem yesterday and love its meditation on gratitude, on how we show respect and to whom. As Americans, we may taut the value of experience and the need to respect those who have lived long enough to level up in this crazy world, but ours is not a culture of respect. … [Read more…]
Cancer has touched the lives of too many people in my life. You could say it’s the creeper neighbor of the medical world, and it needs to stay the hell away from the people I love. A week ago, we found out that Austin’s Uncle Ron has a brain tumor. He’d been having headaches since … [Read more…]
My mother has impossibly perfect handwriting – small, uniform, and neat. I could never forge her signature on bad report cards. She was an absolute stickler for good handwriting, and when I was a child, my sloppy letters must have irked her supremely. She’d hover over my shoulder, remonstrating me for my illegible sentences and making me … [Read more…]
My life is not hard. In fact, it’s downright cushy. By about 3:00pm today, though, I had thrown in the towel. Ragged from waking up early with the Beastie, I read all morning for my latest dissertation chapter. When said toddler wouldn’t nap, I tried to force the issue for over an hour, to no … [Read more…]
I was cutting up some watermelon this afternoon when a thought struck me: My children will never know watermelons with seeds. Real seeds. The kind from watermelons in the past – those slimy black discs we expertly avoided, spat to the ground, or perhaps even feared would sprout if swallowed. Future generations will never have … [Read more…]
Came across this Billy Collins poem, which is apt for Mother’s Day. I’m interested in its portrayal of debt and in how, as children, we fail to recognize our bankrupt state. To paraphrase the Black Widow, we will always have red in our ledger, owed to the people who raised us, be they mothers, fathers, … [Read more…]
Almost exactly a year ago, Austin and I closed on our fabulous 1960s basement rancher in Knoxville, TN, fully solidifying the fact that I was moving back to my hometown. Hell, I was moving within two miles of where I grew up. We’d lived six of the last seven years in Jackson, MS, and while … [Read more…]