My collection of Things Familial has shrunk considerably over the years, mostly via a serious of small and deliberate contractions. Fortunately, the most treasured artifacts lend themselves to repurposing. When they don’t, I try to find other ways of keeping them meaningful and relevant. Which is how my grandparents ended up hanging over the toilet. On [...]
The Personal Ones
While they taste fine as-is, ten minutes in a warm oven transforms raw pine nuts into something sublime. Unfortunately, anything more renders them useless. And the line between “fantastic” and “useless” is quite a fine one, easily missed and just as easily cursed. But when I take care, I’m rewarded with two things: A reminder [...]
My grandparents had a love of tiny things: figurines, jewelry, grandchildren. There was a menagerie I especially treasured, artfully fashioned of bronze and iron and brass, collected in the course of their worldly travels, in those days before you could go online and order anything from anywhere, instantly. We would look at each animal one [...]
Early tomorrow morning, I will leave on my sixth trip to the ninth city I’ve been to so far this year, and my 11th trip since this madcap schedule began last fall. I’ve learned a lot in my travels—much of it about myself, which is one of the chief benefits of removing yourself from your [...]
Speaking of eggs, for almost 10 years now, since my Crohn’s onset led me to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, my love for the humble egg has been ardent and, you’ll pardon the pun, unbroken: most every morning I enjoy two of them, almost always scrambled, almost always folded over some kind of cheese and fashioned [...]
Any day your eggshell peels away in one fine, contiguous curl is a day you cannot claim to have gone completely awry. xxx c This is Day 6 of a 21-day series. For more scoop on the who/what/why, go here.
Comments Off
Embracing the tiny, Day 5: Fly away home
A friend gave me a free wish for the holidays last year. Apparently, it’s now winging its way home to me. Which is funny, because she already helped make my wish come true last year. Greedy for wishes, that’s me. xxx c This is Day 5 of a 21-day series. For more scoop on the [...]
The summer before I turned 13, my most unusual uncle—he’d already had a brief career as a Franciscan monk—was marrying a French girl he’d met while they were both serving in the Peace Corps, in Iran. In one of my family’s smarter moves, we decided to travel en masse to her family’s tiny French village [...]
There are many beautiful routes I can take to walk the mile that separates me from my mail, but my favorite passes an estate that’s home to two German shepherds. For years now, as I’d near the driveway, I’d glance down to see if there was a snout or a paw in that little space [...]
A big part of me sides with the esteemed Quentin Crisp on matters of housecleaning. The remaining portion grudgingly cedes the potential spiritual benefits of several days spent on one’s hands and knees applying a handheld steam cleaner to an expanse of filthy carpet. Release from obsessive thinking for a slice of the day; redemption, [...]
