by Minerva Rising Contributor | Nov 7, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
My dad was a car guy. Growing up, he didn’t have any doubts about where he wanted to end up in life career-wise, as far as I know anyway. He paid for the automotive classes he needed by bartending and by mopping floors at a local bodyshop, and by the time I was...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Oct 31, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
I hear the girls before I see them. “Oh my gosh, it’s a lizard!” Then a swarm of giggles and scuffling footsteps travel up the street, into the driveway, onto my front porch where I sit with a glass of Cabernet in the waning October sun reading Joan...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Oct 24, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
I teach English 101. My classroom is the first college experience most of my students ever have. On the first day of class, it’s a guarantee that someone will raise their hand to ask if they can go to the bathroom, and they will stare at me weirdly when I answer,...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Oct 17, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
Those long plastic boxes with seven lids-one for each day of the week. MTWTFSS. Pill charts. Take on an empty stomach, a full meal, a glass of water. Avoid direct sunlight. Check your blood sugar levels. Administer every four hours. Check with your doctor about...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Aug 15, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
My pain waltzed in to claim me when I was twenty-two and I felt a fateful twist behind my right knee, but it had eyed me in the years before. When I was sixteen I enjoyed my weekly singing lessons until the twenty-minute mark hit. At that point, I prayed to perfect...
by Minerva Rising Contributor | Aug 8, 2013 | Blog, The Keeping Room
On a rainy afternoon in the spring of 2011, my five-year-old son dumped a heavy book into my lap and said, “Read.” I opened the book and read the first line: “All children, except one, grow up.” The book was Peter Pan and Wendy, by J.M. Barrie, first published in...