Category: Essays

Having wandered away from my parents during a family outing, I have just climbed a long flight of steps up an artificial mountain with an enormous golden dome a...

When I first get a glimpse of her—ragged jeans, ponytail, dirty apron—behind the concession stand at a local arts benefit, someone brushes my elbow: my good rea...

What is it about sea turtles? When I tell someone—anyone—that I swam with sea turtles, their eyes smile, shoulders drop, cheek muscles soften. Ohhh, I love sea ...

  My mother Audrey was a birdwatcher. In the 1960’s, when she began pursuing this curious habit, four percent of the U.S. population admitted to bird watch...

  The humid heat of San Miguel Ixtahuacán leaves me sweat-soaked and out of breath from the steep climb to the house at the top of the hill. A woman opens ...

When my niece was born, I wanted her to stay tiny forever. At 5 lbs., 7 oz., she was too delicate for newborn clothes and her days in the NICU gave us time to f...

After my father had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer but before he was actually dying, a plant he’d never seen before appeared in the clearing in his ...

1. I have no scrapbooks, no shoe boxes crammed with keepsakes. No stash of yearbooks, diplomas, theater programs or halves of torn concert tickets, the first do...

We wanted to escape the family misery, and we were going to do it by moving out and getting our own place to live. That’s how we’d ended up here, walking from r...

I can hear Rips pounding on the living room window. “This will be the last time you lock me out of your house!” “If you break that window, I’ll call the police!...