I never thought I’d be one of those parents who let their baby sleep in their bed. It’s a little too “all in the family” for me. And like many people, I worried, “What if I, like, roll over on the baby?” But in December my son Oscar emerges from my body and joins my family, and in no time, our bed.
By the end of my second semester as music major, I was very discouraged. Although I loved music, the study of it did not come easily to me. Unless some kind of miracle occurred, I was about ready to abandon my dream of being a musician. Fortunately, an Older Woman, whose name I’ve forgotten, came into my life and provided that miracle. She was a twenty-four-year old English major and an artist, and I was a twenty-one-year-old ex-seminarian who was […]
I had a deposition near the corner of Ashland/Milwaukee and Division. Anybody who has been there knows that when you open the car door you are greeted by the essence of La Pasadita, a treasured taqueria. Like the characters from a Warner Brothers cartoon, you are lifted off your feet and carried to its source. I had not waited to be summoned: I knew I would be in the neighborhood, and planned to pick up a Burrito de Asada to bring […]
The barista looks back up at me, Sharpie aloft over a half-caf venti soy latte. “Megan?” There have been times when I’ve allowed myself the small joy of just telling the barista: Yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, my name is Megan! And what is yours? By your nametag I’m guessing Tyler? Tyler, isn’t that nice, isn’t that a blessing, such simple names as ours? And then we would rejoice, Tyler and I, in the ease of it all.
American English has so many colloquialisms; expressions that have been grandfathered into our conversation. As busy as a one-armed paperhanger. He looks like he was rode hard and put away wet. It beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. I could go on, but why? Whenever any of us wants to compare the task at hand to something so amazingly complicated that mere mortals should not even think about attempting it, we say, “Well, it’s not like […]
Walking down the street, people stare at me. I’ve been in Taiwan for over one year and I still haven’t gotten used to the staring. I know I’m different. I’m a black female with a short Afro, tall frame, broad shoulders, no makeup. I just have to accept that people will want to take a longer, curious look. And sometimes still be confused by what they see. My first day at my school, a fourth grader asks: “Are you a […]
It is 9pm. It is 9pm, and I’m jogging through a graveyard in the middle of New Hampshire. It is 9pm, and I am optimizing my time by using this time to think about what I will do tomorrow to optimize that time. I decide I will wake up at 4am. I will wake up at 4am, and that will not be a problem because I will be starving (having dreamt of nothing but peanut butter and pork roast). So, […]
The morning of my first day of high school I sat in an auditorium with about 300 other freshmen boys. There were going to be a lot of speeches from a lot of Jesuits. First, an older priest with beige hair came striding out onstage. He had a kind of JFK look about him. He meant business. He said, “Boys, we have a motto at Saint Xavier High School. Men For Others. What’s most important to us is that you learn […]
It all started the year I quit medical school. Actually, I flunked out of medical school. I got Fs in four out of six classes and my scholarship was gone. Poof! So there I was, kicked out onto the cold cement steps of this prestigious university, barely a nickel to my name, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But I did know that I wanted to be with my girlfriend, Diane. Now Diane […]
