I managed a ski shop awhile back. It was a fun, laid back, bro-talking industry – for a guy. But for a woman, it was an often sexist fight for recognition that wasn’t based on how tight my clothes were. Our mostly male customers seemed surprised I was...
I hung the lonely pirate today, on the wall in my office. My mom bought it for me when she and Henry went to the Farnsworth Museum the spring before she got sick. She bought it for me because she said she thought of me when she saw it. The pirate looks defeated and...
Mom asks me regularly about my writing, in that sort of soft, “I-don’t-want-to-scare-you-off-by-sounding-too-intense-about-this-so-I’m-going-to-pretend-I-don’t-care-much-but-I-really-think-it’s-important” voice. Because when your mother is a...
As I reflect on the transition we are making from Spring to Summer, I think of how incredibly affected I am by the seasons. In fact, the manuscript of poems I am revising now is organized through the natural cycles of day and night, the seasons, and aging. Here are...
I grew up in the south end of Seattle during the seventies. My childhood home was on 38th street, a block made up of Black families, a Filipino family and two white families – mine being one of them. 38th street sat on the impoverished edge of Mt. Baker’s wealthiest...
Though I finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed more than a week ago, I’m still mesmerized by the courage and determination it took for her to hike the Pacific Crest Trail all alone. But what has really stuck with me is the process of finding yourself through...
“Perhaps you are still writing – if so I hope you surrender to it like a forbidden lover. I hope you steal time, skip work, hide out at the back table of a coffee shop, lie about your whereabouts, lose sleep, bag friends, and let your heart live what it...
I like to write, so I enroll in an 8-week writing class. On the first day, when it’s my turn to check in, I say, “I have no formal training in writing, never studied English beyond high school. I’ve taken adult education writing classes, groups and workshops, and...
So I’ve started a new project – a collection of short memoir pieces that recount some of the many jobs I’ve had, accompanied by fictional stories inspired by each of them. From realtor to chicken rancher, from chambermaid to cook to box maker to landscaper to...
