My father always grew cosmos in his summer garden. He would proudly bring a bouquet into the house and my mother would display them on our kitchen table in the same small glass vase each summer evening. Although both my parents are gone, I still have the vase. And each summer I grow the cosmos of…
This ramshackle house, about to collapse, with not one true-square corner to its credit, is how I wake up some mornings. Out of plumb, not syncing with the world I find myself in. My jokes don’t seem funny, even to me. My cat purrs and bites me at the same time. I stub my toe…
Every Thursday night our local Wendy’s donates their lot space to a classic car show. The guys (and it’s always the guys) arrive in the early afternoon, bring out their dust rags and start polishing ol’ Betsy for the show. Most of these vehicles get driven oh, fifty miles a month, back and forth to…
I am reminded that there is both joy and sorrow in Mother’s Day. Joy, for the present family connections. Sorrow and regret for mothers who are no longer with us. But it also occurs to me that the primary attributes that we celebrate in mothers: care taking, love, empathy for others, are present in all…
When I set out to write the Pegasus Quincy mystery series, I knew the first one, Death in Copper Town, had to take place in a mining town on the slopes of the Verde Valley. To make it realistic, I had to include the Ailanthus trees ubiquitous to that part of the Valley. Apple trees in the…
When I was young, the neighbor lady on the corner took in sewing. After school I’d often go over to her house and play with the scraps of fabric she collected just for me in a box she kept beside the machine. Some of my earliest memories are of the clickety-clack of her treadle moving…
“I want to be able to live without a crowded calendar. I want to be able to read a book without feeling guilty, or go to a concert when I like.” Golda Meir Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel for ten years and active in public service all of her life was described as strong-willed,…
I’ve lived with cats all of my life. When I was little girl in South Dakota, I would coming running home after school to see the kittens. My mother forbade us to touch them until their eyes opened, about ten days after birth. That ten days seemed to last forever! Finally eyelids would open to…
When I was a child, I remember sitting on a kitchen stool, watching my mother fix a cake for my birthday. As my special day falls in winter, it was often snowing outside, but warm and cozy in the kitchen. By tradition, birthdays were celebrated with an angel food cake, usually a box mix. Box…
When I was a little girl, my family had an old upright piano, black. We lived in a small house, so the only place available for it was in the baby’s room. That meant whenever he was taking a nap I couldn’t practice. My mother engaged a piano teacher who came promptly on Wednesday afternoons…