I was, for many years in my family, the Finder of Lost Objects. My mother, especially, had a knack for losing things, and was in the habit of calling upon me to find them. A comb, a telephone number on a slip of paper, the car keys, her wallet, one shoe. I was gone from the house when her engagement ring disappeared, and I possessed no power to find...
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In the first four minutes of our Spanish class, I have managed to confidently declare more ridiculous statements and ask more impenetrable questions than any of the other students who are very wisely holding their tongues. A rough translation of my gibberish would be: I have a little spoon. May I borrow your hair today? Is the fruit seller awake? The...
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A snapshot: A woman walks down the road outside a small California town. She walks with a swing of her body, a comfortable yet deliberate walk. As I drive by I notice on this December day that she is barefoot. My passenger cries out, “Stop the car! Do you know who that is?” I don’t know who that is. “It’s Joan Baez!” To my passenger’s dismay I didn’t stop...
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The guy on the TV screen tells me two things I didn’t know. One, I almost certainly have a skunk under my house because in winter that’s where skunks go, under houses. And two, if I don’t already own a Skunkinator, I need to run out and get one right now. Salesman he is, but the way he phrases it is more like two of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: We...
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For a long time everything was colored by the public violence of that death. We saw it: Jackie, her pink suit splattered with blood, crawling across the back of the convertible. We saw it in photographs in the pages of Life magazine, and later on television, and we were children. When Vietnam became the first televised war, the precedent had been set: We...
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