Tag: truth
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Round & Round
Sometimes I get frustrated with my indirect, repetitive routes. Up and down California, before I can retrieve the tiny house. Roundabout Oregon before deciding not to live there. Across the country to save my mother, who didn’t want to be saved. Up and down Baja wondering what I’m doing with my life. All this traveling…
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Stung
Knee deep in the La Jolla Pacific, I feel a gentle slice on top of the second toe on my left foot. So gentle in fact that I’m surprised to see blood. Hunh. Wading out to get a better look, a half inch cut bleeds copiously. Foot above heart to slow the flow, I rest…
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La Bolsa Roja
Cabo Pulmo is known as a primo snorkel spot, so early one morning I drove over and set out down the beach. I found a sandy spot to enter and donned my gear, putting land clothes in a brilliant red drawstring knapsack up on a dune. The bay was murky and cool. Every so often…
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Tolerance
A not-so-kindly sailor answered my ad for a sailing instructor. His second email was patronizing and disrespectful (if that’s not redundant), which shocked me. I’m always shocked by contempt. It takes awhile to believe it, and then to remember that their behavior has nothing to do with me. It is learned. My mother’s brother once…
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Bioluminescence
Camped by Bahía Concepción under a fullish moon, I rinse my hands in the water and sparks fly. Delight! Skimming handfuls of sand across the surface elicits underwater fireworks. Bioluminescence. Years ago in Florida, I noticed the same phenomenon. So I stripped and dove into the Atlantic. Every stroke was a miracle, light streaming from…
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Muertos
They are holding hands, leaning back and spinning. Their twirling (or maybe their laughter?) generates light. Around and round, faster and faster, gazing at each other, eyes on the prize: mother and son. There is only Love. It was time: five months after she left her body. She began the process on Johnny’s birthday, May…
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Memory Problems
My father seems to have memory problems. He forgets that his only daughter loves him and means him no harm. And so he writes venomous missives. The first time this happened, I’d just published “Free Love Ain’t” in a national anthology of essays by folks who’d survived so-called counterculture parents. Back then I read and…
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Struggling with Wait
I have been heavier. I have been lighter. It rarely has anything to do with calories. Mostly it has to do with happiness. When I set my needs and wants aside – for work, family, friends – I suffer. Self-loathing sets in, the mind attacks the body: you’re fat. You’re over-weight. But in fact I’m…
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Mary Patricia Kathleen
“I love you, gorgeous girl!” says Mom. I am between sleeping and waking, delighted to hear her voice. She sounds like she did in her thirties: vibrant, happy, raring to go. Her energy warms my heart, causing an hours-long smile. Unbeknownst to me, her body is in the New Orleans VA hospital: COVID, pneumonia, collapsed…
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Essay #36: patagonia
My father is going to Patagonia tomorrow, to build a bridge. Just like old times. When I was a kid, he worked for the federal Bureau of Public Roads, building bridges and roads in the mountains. I remember riding shotgun in a yellow-orange government truck, somewhere in California or Oregon or Washington. I remember evergreens…
essays by shé 