For a long time, when asked what profession I was in, I would reply by saying that I was a professional milk steamer. I worked behind the counter at a small café in Harvard Square, Cambridge, in the shadow of the most prestigious university in the nation. For some reason, the morning shift was often slow, so the other employees and I would kill time telling stories. Like the one about the store being owned by the mob, which would explain how the company could afford to pay two employees seven... more »

For weeks, I mistook Bea for a teenager. Her eyes were so big, and she kept her hair cropped close and never wore makeup. She was spindly, and her gait was clumsy. Her face was a thin oval, as though two crescent moons were looped together. Bea was dark-skinned, and when she wasn’t pregnant she hardly had breasts. I was 23 and had just started working at a drop-in center for low-income women in a tidy California neighborhood. The center was a small house on a quiet street. Our services... more »

Ourselves, a Resurrection For Gavin Cross Do you remember the church built three times upon itself we visited in Italy? How, with each descent, the stairways narrowed, until we stood in that dank room, surrounded only by stones the color of ash? Nothing grew there, in that church beneath a church, and the only sound filling the space was our quick intake of breath and exhale. Standing together in that darkness we both still felt alone, so we pointed to the tops of arched walls, and said... more »

Before the start: you should relax and walk around. Try to go to the bathroom one last time before hitting the trail. Try not to think about the run. So I think about laces. The flat ones—cotton and wide and secure—but rarely seen anymore on most trail running shoes. Now the laces resemble tiny climbers' ropes, and you don't so much tie them to seal the shoe, but pull them tight and cinch them off like a rappelling rope. But you can buy the flat ones in stores—any store, even a grocery... more »

My whole life I’ve basically botched the essential message of Mary Poppins, and I never stopped to realize the cost. I’ve walked around with this idea of “go fly a kite” as some unquestioned Zen truth, a mythical DMZ of family togetherness. Only recently have I learned how much this kite has flown. That’s bad. What’s even worse is the emotional heart of the film, contained in the three-word title of that schmaltzy ballad: “Feed the Birds.” This one song, and its nihilist ethos,... more »

Welcome home. Welcome back, sir, and welcome home. Welcome back to the world you once knew, one which looks entirely different to you now, one which resembles the world you lived in before but now seems drawn like a cartoon and scored with music you’ve never heard. Welcome back to a civilization you couldn’t wait to get back to, but isn’t what you remember at all. There are people smiling and shaking your hand and slapping your back – actors in a bad play about the life of someone... more »

John Mully and I were sitting in the ER, Johnny holding my undershirt to his bleeding eye, me tapping my foot to the rhythm of the heart monitor attached to a bum lying in the hall. more »

I'm not prone to premonitions, but my gut has long told me Arizona would bring the showdown. I haven't avoided the desert southwest because of it. more »

Depending on how you look at it, I was born in the middle of nowhere—or the center of everywhere. more »

Tim, as he says to call him, yells “SHUT UP, YOU!” at the homeless man who is walking with the shopping cart that overflows with rotting food, stuffed cloth bags and cardboard signs. more »

You’d never know that our driver was in Dubai when the tsunami struck Sri Lanka. He plays tour-guide as we dodge tuk-tuks, scooters, and delivery vans. more »

We call this place Hepatitis Heights. It is a drug den on top of 23rd Street, Potrero Hill, San Francisco. The year is 1999. more »

I'm choking and I feel guilty. This pig stomach, it's a gift. It's grisly and dry but that's not why I'm having a hard time chewing. more »

One day in front of my computer I suddenly notice that I have been spelling it wrong. I mix up the final two letters of my last name, transposing them. more »

I walked into the bar, my entrance much like that clichéd scene in old Westerns where the stranger pushes open the swinging doors of a saloon as the music stops and the patrons stare. The record that played inside the lounge hadn’t stopped, but instead skipped so that Otis Redding sang, Sit—sit—sitting on the dock of the bay. And each counter dweller had turned with cursory glances. I was the only white woman there—the only white as well as the only woman—and I was significantly... more »

Pause at the checkboxes. Hover above them, blue ballpoint pen in hand, as you read the choices offered. After your name, address, and social security number, the Common Application for Undergraduate College Admission requests one last piece of identifying information: more »

Chuck and I were standing in the hot lunch line holding our blue trays. We were tired of waiting. He pushed at the tray's edges and spun it like a basketball on his pointer finger. I held mine steady. I would like to say that it was because I was reverent and respectful and aware of my actions, but, indeed, I couldn't make trays spin on my pointer finger, attracting the wide-eyed gaze of both younger kids and coming-into-themselves girls. more »

One of the first words in my vocabulary was roller. By the time I turned thirteen, I was swirling brides’ hair into chignons, French twists, and fancy pin-curled updos. I was giving perms to my friends before I got my driver’s license. One fall, when blond highlights were popular among guys, my mom and I did the hair of half of my high school football team, all in our kitchen. more »

In the summer of 1992 my mother wore a purple Rod Stewart T-shirt around the house or to mow the lawn. Back then they had similar haircuts, like a fuzzy headed dandelion cloud, silvery-blonde, and they even shared the same… more »

My husband Dima rattled his keys in the locked side door to our kitchen. With a sharp intake of breath, our two-year-old exclaimed, “Daddy!” I smiled with the sound of his childish zeal. Giggles rang like bells as little Vitka toddled to the stairwell. The cottony feel of his flushed cheek, the silken brush of his hair—I could nearly feel these things as he pressed against his father. I closed my eyes and leaned against the futon. more »