I was nine years old when a toned-down version of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt began airing on network television, and I was absolutely terrified of the opening sequence. Having courage means we have to do it scared The old black-and-white TV in my childhood bedroom had two knobs on it but, alas, no remote control. If…
I see you, mama, up at 6 a.m. to wash the soccer socks and find the shin guards that you remembered at 5 a.m. for practice tonight. I see you planning and spending a small fortune on your kid’s themed birthday party every year. I see you up at the elementary school twice a week,…
After watching Still Alice with my husband, I wanted to see the progression of my mother’s early onset Alzheimer’s disease in photos. I looked through photos of my mom from old blog posts. I put them in chronological order to create a visual timeline of her decline. People who stopped visiting her during her illness…
I never thought I’d find myself in liturgy. I was raised in the Church of Christ in Texas in the 1990s. My father was raised Episcopalian in Texas in the 1960s, only because there happened to be an Episcopal church across the street from his house. My father’s father was raised Swiss Mennonite in Kansas…
I had a perm in kindergarten. Every morning my mother diligently primped my hair with her curling iron to perfect it before school. (Never mind that she also had my two-year-old brother to care for at the time.) One morning, probably in a rush to do all the things, my mother accidentally singed the top…
