Getting older is not for the weak. This has become my mantra the past year as I’ve struggled physically with ongoing back and hip issues. How it started: I sneezed while getting up from my recliner. While this sounds like the beginning of a joke, it isn’t, although I have tried to laugh with every doctor, coach, and physical therapist that I’ve worked with...
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I had the privilege of introducing a friend at her book launch celebration in Flagstaff a few weeks ago. I admire her writing, and her. The essay she read that night is one that I teach in my class. Seeing the essay as part of a whole collection—a book that I could hold in my hands—delighted me. Many will now get to read her beautiful words and ideas. A...
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The last time my parents were in Flagstaff it just so happened to be the time my Letter From Home was in the paper edition of Flag Live. Although I’d sent hyperlinks of my essays to them, my dad held the paper and marveled that my essay was in print. “They gave you the whole page,” he remarked while folding it under his arm. I was waiting for him to say it...
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My husband and I have been traveling more in the southwest than we have previously. After realizing that we’ve lived in Flagstaff for sixteen years and have seen very little of the area, we decided to create a list of places to visit. Even so, we are still looking to visit places in Utah and New Mexico but haven’t made it to Walnut Canyon yet. A few weeks...
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My husband, Marc, and I made it out to Lake Mary this weekend. First, a disclaimer: I grew up in upstate New York, about two miles from Lake Ontario. So, I am a “lake snob” for sure. But since visiting the upper falls of Lake Mary last spring during the snow melt, I’ve come to appreciate the charms of a small-ish lake surrounded by forest, hills and quaint...
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The first candle I burned this morning was called “cedar balsam.” The next, “tree farm.” But I need only step outside into the frigid morning air to smell real wood. As I walk, I see Oregon juncos picking amongst the sawdust looking for birdseed. I survey the wood shavings and a freshly made stump close to the fence line; the only proof that a...
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I’ve always wanted a dog. In some of my daydreams, the dog is a cheerful, white and gold fur, blue-bandana-wearing Corgi named Joe. In others, she’s a sweet, gray and white Pitbull named Mira. When I was little, my parents gifted me a dog for Christmas, so I named her Noel. Our love affair was not long-lasting after she dug a hole so deep in the backyard...
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Medical procedures that involve anesthesia often put me in a mental tailspin, and my recent visit to a local surgical center offered no exceptions. Even though it was a routine procedure that many of us of a certain age endure, I carefully placed our outdated medical directives and wills on my home desk before going to the surgery center. They are from...
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My husband, Marc, shares enthusiastically that he is meeting with a composer his local orchestra has solicited for a piece of music. As he tells me about her and how they will explore his percussion instruments, he drops the bomb. “She’ll be here at 2 p.m. tomorrow,” he smiles, as he walks into another room to pull out and display his instruments for her...
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I do what I always do when I haven’t heard from Hank – whose name has been changed for the sake of privacy – for over six months: I scan the obituaries. He’s still alive, as far as I can tell, which means something else. It means his emails must be in my spam folder. Alas, there’s no proof of life there, either. Which means only one other thing is...
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My first memory of sending Christmas cards was helping my grandmother at her kitchen table. Everything she needed was staged on a white plastic tablecloth covered with poinsettia designs. She had a damp sponge sitting in a saucer on the table for my job: to seal the envelopes and affix the stamps. It seemed that she wrote a letter in each card, but I don’t...
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My husband sent me a link to a book review this week by an author whose work is in my wheelhouse. The author’s new book extolls the mental and physical health benefits of walking in his neighborhood the past several years. Of small observations and large realizations. I think of my almost-finished manuscript of walking my own neighborhood. A world-weary...
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The river shush-shushes through Jane’s backyard as I catch the last of the afternoon breezes under the shade of several trees. It’s tempting to close my eyes, to call this a meditation, but another thought has taken over as I listen to birds calling to one another from the trees on the bank of the river—do birds have accents like humans? Is that why I...
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“Thank you for creating such a positive and beautiful atmosphere. You looked at us as if we haven’t been broken just yet.” Note from a student I have been fortunate to find another teaching position at our local university and, although I don’t often write about my students, they have been much on my mind since I sent them off to their final exams...
Read MoreI continue to be a work in progress. One of my most recent activities, aside from birdwatching, reading, and binging the second season of Bridgerton, has been trying to stop myself from typing I hope this note finds you well, on my email correspondence. The sentiment is true enough, although the words themselves are automatic and now meaningless after so...
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Scientists discover that sea slugs can self-decapitate. A childhood memory of hiding under my desk, hands over head, ready for the bomb. A paper cup filled with coffee and milk and swirls of chocolate. A pair of rainbow-colored go-go boots that I will never own. Scientists discover that, after decapitation, sea slugs can regenerate their hearts in about...
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Every group of friends has an organizer, and in our group it’s Ron. I’ve learned over the years that it’s more fun to say “yes” to Ron’s gatherings rather than following my usual inclination to stay home buried under cats and a pile of blankets and books and my usual state of introversion and torpor. So, on a recent early Sunday morning I found myself...
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“The grief process is very fluid. Most of us do not proceed in an orderly fashion through the stages of shock to acceptance.” This was the first line I read on the handout from the campus counseling office before scanning the rest of the worksheet, wryly observing the neatly numbered stages one through 10. As a writing teacher, I wondered what kind of form...
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Every few days, I find myself rewatching The Matrix 4: Resurrections movie trailer as though it is the whole film and wonder how I can possibly wait three months until December 22 to be fully immersed in that world again. Certain cultural touchstones stay with each of us through our lives and one of mine will always be The Matrix franchise. It was one of...
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I moved into my new office in the middle of a monsoon downpour on a Friday afternoon. It feels auspicious when something begins in the middle of a weather adventure. Monsoon rains, moving up and down four flights of stairs, dodging a heavy and steady rainfall running under eaves and awnings as best as I could, trying to keep dry. Then, moving furniture,...
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Smoky Sunset Photo by Stacy Murison Even though our county government tells me that I should always be prepared for summer forest fires, I never really am. I have a better bug-out-bag for the oft-imagined zombie apocalypse or potential nuclear fallout (I am a child of the 1980s, after all) than I do for the realistic evacuation orders for fires. As the...
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I think I’m late to the garden this year, although I’m not sure—I seem to have kept notes of everything last year except plantings. What I remember is that by the time I went to buy tomato starters last May, they were mostly gone. The person at one garden store shook her head sadly while telling me I was about two weeks too late. Because there was still...
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An ex-boyfriend once told me that every day is an anniversary of something. I suppose that’s true, especially as I scan social media “memories” from one year ago. I was especially active that first month of the pandemic: sourdough starter photos, music playlists for students as we all scrambled to finish the school year online, and photos of a bluebird at...
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On a recent Saturday night, I found myself sitting on the floor reading notes from a graduate class in philosophy taught by Bud Ruf (pronounced “roof”). Even in my 30s, I could not bring myself to call him “Bud,” but always “professor” or “doctor,” to his annoyance. “Call me Bud,” he would say, and I would reply, “OK…Doctor Ruf.” I understand his...
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This English teacher’s heart beat more quickly this past week, reading quotes from so many people who seem to have read George Orwell’s work. Of course, it also was laden with the hope that people had actually read Orwell’s 1984. As time went on, I realized that it’s easier to invoke an idea of intelligence than it is to actually dwell in the realm of...
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Once in a while, an idea takes hold of me and sets me off on a hamster wheel of adventure—always scrambling, but not quite arriving anywhere. My singular mission the past few weeks has been finding a recipe for pumpkin pie. Not any pie, mind you, but the ice cream pumpkin pie my mother made for Thanksgiving sometime back in the late 1970s. It was the first...
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Recently, I dreamt that I wore a high-necked lacey blouse, hair done in a Gibson-girl bun, and had discovered a way to preserve lemons while standing in a farmhouse kitchen that was part of a farm and not a kitchen remodeling trend. Lemons were hard to get in dreamland, and in my current reality they seem to go bad within two days. They have become worse...
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I always thought I was going to be an astronomer. But failing physics and trigonometry in high school put me on a different path. It’s good I found an astronomer to marry, I thought again as I packed our car with chairs and blankets. It was the second night of the Perseid meteor shower, and Marc knew a perfect place to observe the meteors. Although the...
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I am up late, fighting with strangers on the internet. The feelings of my seemingly justifiable rage wash over me in an adrenaline-fueled mission to find the most accurate words to prove my point. The message has to be just so, my tone both biting and funny. My aim is true: I must prove to myself that I am smarter than my unknown nemesis. Or at least feel...
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I wake and pad out to my makeshift garden. I had cleared a small area in the yard to grow three lettuces, two cucumbers and five tomato plants. You might call me a COVID cliché with my gluten-free sourdough starter and a half-assed victory garden. But there is no sense of victory as I notice another leaf gone from the small bunch of romaine that had seemed...
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Q: What’s brown and sticky? A: A stick! I’m a terrible joke-teller. I never remember the punch lines and I have a poor sense of timing. I’m the friend you patiently wait for as I try out three or four endings before giving up on the joke altogether. But 20 years ago, my friend, Sarah, told me the stick joke and I wish I could give her a dollar for...
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Dear Friend, Thanks for your text. I’ve been thinking about you also and hate that we’re not able to see each other right now. While I am happy to hear that you’re able to work from home, I am sorry about the increased number of hours you are working. I cannot imagine an eight-hour conference call. How did you manage? How does your company handle restroom...
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I dressed in layers and packed my knapsack until it was bursting. Too much water and not enough sunscreen, I would later learn on the trail—and that I probably never need to bring a paperback bird guide with me again as long as I have the eBird app on my phone. At the end of January, I decided to go on my first bird watching hike through Picture Canyon. I...
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I’ve been bothered by the squirrels and chipmunks in my yard for the past month. Not because they are there—I did, after all, buy a special seed mix and some dried seed corn for them—but because I always thought they hibernated all winter. Instead, they bound through the snow as though there are mere flakes on the ground rather than hard-packed...
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The quiet mornings after the recent snowfall had me marveling at the seemingly absolute silence outside. Friends discovered and shared articles about the physics of snow absorbing sound, and we agreed it all made sense. But I couldn’t get over exactly how quiet it was, the only sounds a neighbor making their way through snowy sidewalks or streets, trying...
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The sun has just risen and I’m outside in my slippers and pajamas using a kitchen knife to no avail. The window screen, so easy to remove a few weeks ago during warmer weather, is firmly stuck, perhaps frozen, in place. The outdoor thermometer hovers around 30 degrees. I go back indoors, open the window and push the screen out, then run back outside with a...
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When I moved to Flagstaff 11 years ago, I marveled at how wonderful it was to see so many people I knew wherever I went. It felt joyful to be able to stop and say hello and chat for a few minutes in the produce section or while walking to dinner with my husband. My friend, a long-time resident, expressed bemusement. “Just you wait,” she told me. “It’s not...
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I’ve been struggling the past few months with a feeling that I’ve come to describe as post-Brooklyn let down. I miss everything about the neighborhood I lived in earlier this summer: The school children down the block, the local book store around the corner (with a fat cat named Tiny) and the roses that grew in small gardens in front of many of the...
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Summer ends earlier for teachers than it does on the calendar, which means that I’m now in peak anxiety season. Not about teaching, which I love. I can hardly wait to get back to the classroom and meet the new students. Instead, I am anxiously thinking about the list of projects I had hoped to complete over the summer with “time off.” Looking at my list...
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I saw the advertisement around February, which is the month when I think I can’t possibly drive the same five miles of Flagstaff anymore: “Studio apartment for rent, Brooklyn.” I wouldn’t say I have many regrets in my life, but there is something like a feeling of absence. I wish I had lived in New York City when I was younger and been an intern...
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The meeting starts as all of my meetings outside of familiar buildings start. Out in the wilds of a water tank parking lot somewhere in Kachina Village, I wonder two things: am I in the right spot? and, am I late? A short walk through the pine needle-covered parking area assures me there is no other “there” here and that I just have to be patient. I see a...
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It was summer and, although my mother and I don’t remember exactly how old I was, I was old enough to read and old enough to know better. My mother held the box of effervescent denture tablets in one hand and, in the days before 911, dialed Poison Control on my grandmother’s rotary phone. I stood there stupidly in my grandmother’s kitchen, wondering how...
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Most Saturday mornings start the same: I ask my husband who will make us pancakes for breakfast. Since the cats are not quite teenagers yet (and do not have opposable thumbs, nor are they tall enough to reach the stove), our options are limited. Sadly, I have yet to perfect making pancakes at high altitude. I never remember if it’s more flour, more milk or...
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I bought Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, while traveling for Christmas a few years ago. We were staying at a rental house that was incredibly clean and sparsely decorated—I was ready to occupy that space permanently. Reading Kondo’s book made me eager to return home and tidy the hell out of everything; it seemed possible I could...
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The holiday gifts are purchased and wrapped. Now is the time I buy one thing for myself to help me in the year ahead. I can spend hours in a single day looking and still not find it. I’m in search of something so perfect, so uniquely me that I will not know exactly what it looks like until I see it. In between holiday concerts year-end work and...
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I had dinner recently with a group of writing colleagues while we were at a conference. One writer shared part of his talk for his panel presentation on the concept of home. My colleagues then shared the journeys they had taken and the many places they had lived through the years. We talked about where we were from, where we live now and if we considered...
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The season of The Great Pumpkin is upon us—I hope you have figured out where the most sincere pumpkin patch is in our region. It’s also the season where spirited discussions happen about the pervasiveness of pumpkin pie spice and all things pumpkin-flavored. Every year, I think I will lose a friend or two over how it is too early for pumpkin-flavored...
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