Short Stories
A Braided Essay: These Dreams of Love
I Become – Part 1 Back in the ‘70s, soon after graduating from college in California, I joined my mom and dad on Oahu and became a lonely little bird, my song squelched inside the gilded cage of my parents’ military home. Sorely missing my college friends’ comradery, surrounded by uniformed Air Force officers, I…
Read MoreFinding my Way Inside and Out
When Barry’s misdiagnosed broken hip and sudden, unexpected hip replacement surgery a month later plunged him into pain and complications, I fell into fear. Anxious thoughts imprisoned me: What if he doesn’t get better? How could I possibly live without him? Am I making the best choices to help him heal? Thoughts of our joyful…
Read MoreLove in the Lost and Found
In January, 2016, my 94-year-old mom, Ruby, fell in her bathroom in Tucson, Arizona. A blood clot traveled from her hip, still bruised and sore from two falls the previous week, to her brain, causing a massive stroke. Minutes after the ambulance crew wheeled Mom into the hospital, my brother, John, who’d moved to Tucson…
Read MoreA Free-Roaming Cat Family and Me (Part 5)
My cat family lived contentedly outside. The only times we touched were when Mama Kitty cautiously rubbed her furry back against my leg. She trusted me to feed her and her offspring, now longer than she is, but not nearly so rolly polly. I guess she ate as often as she could get me to…
Read MoreGates, Dreams, and Feral Chickens
Suddenly, I awoke from a dream: I look through my sheer living room curtains. Barry’s BMW and my Hyundai sit side by side in the darkened garage. The streetlight shining in front of our house illuminates a man between our cars walking toward our house. He doesn’t look threatening. I don’t know him. I’d recognize…
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