First, a memory: in 1989, Gil and my mom and David and I took a summer’s driving trip through the American Southwest. All of us lived on academic calendars, so we had three months to putz around the country and learn that a single VW Golf was starting to be not quite enough room for [...]
That’s what a friend of the family said to my mom and I today, in the hospital. My stepfather, Gil, looks very much like he’s in the end game with his most recent cancer, multiple myeloma. (“End game” may not be the right analogy; it might be “overtime” or “extra innings” at this point, but [...]
Sometimes unremarkable times are actually the ones I find myself wanting to remember. I picked P up from her day care late this afternoon, whistling as I walk in the door. Any time I walk into a space in which Kate or Piper can hear me, I give the same little three note whistle I’ve [...]
Either Kate got her eyes lasered yesterday or she went out on a bender the likes of which I have never seen, because this morning she’s been stumbling into walls and wearing dark sunglasses and moaning about the light from our neighbor’s refrigerator bothering her. And then Piper decided to wake up earlier than usual [...]
Yesterday, while Kate was sleeping after an all-night shift, Piper and I took the car out of the way of the street cleaners and went up at Fort Tryon Park for a bit. It was just about 70 degrees, partly cloudy, and the park smelled absolutely and stereotypically Autumnal – dry leaves, fallen acorns, hobo [...]