In my family, as in most of America, the women do the carrying. All the things that weigh heavy in a life are bound up in our arms. My Grandma Norma was a librarian in Cincinnati who carried my mom through her tender years in a one-bedroom apartment following a marriage annulment in the 1950s. A single working mother in an age where opportunities were legally limited, she also carried books—wobble-wheeled carts piled high and endless heavy stacks in her arms, back when words needed paper to survive. I picture her in neat blouses and long swaying skirts, her dark hair echoing the waves, as she walked the aisles of wooden-shelved rooms that housed "Invisible Man," "The Feminine Mystique," and the Pentagon Papers from the New York Times. At some point, probably in her middle years, her body declared war on itself: rheumatoid arthritis. The joints of her limbs grew warm, swollen, and reluctant. Angry synovial membranes in her fingers and elbows bound tendons to scar tis...

In May 1987, my family piled into a distressingly bright orange Volvo station wagon and left Pennsylvania for southeast Texas. My new home was shockingly different. It was hot, with air like split pea soup full of bugs that bite. Unfamiliar humidity perfumed the breeze. People talked funny, said my name wrong. I felt like a foreigner, a sore thumb, a shirt on inside out and backwards.  When we arrived, my brother and I had to be enrolled in school, which required an in-person placement test. I wanted everyone to like me and make a good impression, so I dressed up. I put on my favorite white romper with the lettuce edge and primary-colored balloon print. A bow of looped shoelaces clipped in front of my ponytail. A couple water-filled glitter bracelets nearly sliding off my skinny wrists. And I wore my my most awesome shoes.   They were violent pink dress-up heels with black soles. Pretend play shoes. Not soft like the clear plastic jellies I wore that got pebbles lodged i...

In first grade, I made my mother a vase. Crafted with masking tape, shoe polish, and a repurposed glass jar, it was a new item designed to look vintage. With age comes value and significance, but I didn't know that yet.    The teacher guided us in this creation. First, tear off dozens of pieces of one-inch-wide masking tape that feels like paper, but resembles dry sand and smells vaguely of chemicals. Don’t try to make the ends neat, she said, the more jagged the better.  Next, plaster the entire canister with masking tape positioned every which way. We want mess, we want disorganization. Embrace imperfection. Make it complete enough to cover each square millimeter of the glass, overwhelming and canceling out everything it used to be.  Then, dip old rags or torn bits of t-shirts into dark brown Kiwi-brand shoe polish. Use the globs of stain that smells like gasoline and sweet wax to paint over the taped canister. Watch it change from ecru to sienna, from a known thin...

On Sunday mornings, I worship at the altar of the washing machine. While the pious sit in pews next to stained-glass windows, I sit alone cross-legged on the floor outside of my laundry room. It is a convocation of one. Each article of clothing I touch is holy because it smells of my children -- a mix of familiarity and the musk of youth. Cloth by cloth, I examine the fabric for this week's stains -- pewter gray slash of pencil lead, green crush of fresh-earth grass, brown drips of chocolate milk. The mild marks of those yet unencumbered by adulthood. I anoint them with stain treatments and set them aside, then sort the rest into mounds of darks, colors, and once-bright-as-snow whites. It's like separating the sheep from the goats, managing this alike-but-not-the-same. See how big his shirt is compared to hers; how big they both are compared to the new infant onesies I once washed reverently and continuously. I am reminded of marks I thought would never come out, both on the cl...

Ten years ago, I was still deeply in the trenches of being momma to two very young kids. Every evening after putting them to bed - at the time, they were 3 years old and about 6 months old - I performed a sweep of the downstairs. I gathered together the detritus of the day which small people are so good at spreading around, put things with like things so they could be found and scattered again the next day, and put each item in its place for the night like I was tucking it into bed, too. Little People sound-effects farm and five figures stored in the silo, check. Little People tractor and two figures chucked in the wagon, check. Ten rainbow colored stacking cups, each smaller than the last, check. Ten mini board books in a handled carry box, check. Ten washable Crayola markers in the box, check. But one night, while my husband was out of town for union business and I was barely holding it together for the three of us who were all cranky, overstimulated, and exhausted, one marker ca...

Year before last, on your birthday, I visited a Wind Phone. Do you know about those? Old fashioned handset telephones with curly cords, not connected to any pesky wires, placed in parks or gardens around the world for people to use.   Remember when I was in Dallas and you were in the hospital and I'd call every day to check in, and I kept calling every Sunday after you got home? Remember I always said, "Hi, it's me," and you'd say, "Hel-llo," a song that was a mix between comfortably expected and comical, your voice dropping a few notes between syllables?  Remember my senior year in college when Brandon broke off our engagement four months before the wedding, and I called, wordless, only to sob into the phone, and you sat on the other end of the line for hours listening to me cry, just being together?   Remember that time I called and told you Amy's grandmother died, and you moaned that nobody tells you anything, and I said they might talk to you mor...

I have befriended the dust bunnies that live under the kitchen stools. One is long and thin, with an errant Christmas tree needle for what I assume is a tail. The other is a bit chubbier with dust-fluff, and a tiny scrap of pink construction paper which I assume is a nose. Sometimes, between changing the latest load of laundry and wiping the day's stickiness off of the counters, I sit down at the table and chat with Walden and Gertrude. That is what I named them, after they had been there so long I decided to let them stay.   Walden (left) and Gertrude (right) Yesterday, as I swept away last night's dinner crumbs and set down a steaming mug of raspberry tea, I mumbled under my breath, "Why am I the only one in this house who cleans anything?"   “There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. There's your answer,” Gertrude responded from beneath the kitchen counter.  "Ah, the question is not what you look at, bu...

For most of my teen years, I felt like the only fruit ripening on a dying tree. My parents were frequently unreliable and my living situation was forever unstable . I swore I'd claw my way up and out, but there was no trusted person I could turn to for comfort or guidance. Assurances that I was not the only person struggling, or even promises that I would survive, were few and far between. So I sought solace in words.  First music, then terrible poetry, then books - words were a lifeline those years. I found perseverance in 26 letters. When I made it to college, I began writing down the sentences that spoke to me.  It's been exactly five years since I shared the story of my quote book : a project I began in fall 1998 and have kept going for more than 25 years. Last of the first quote book   So I felt it was time for an update.    These notebooks (now there are two of them) are a timeline of more than half of my life. Each entry is a mirror of my interests, feeli...

The brain, that tired old thing, may forget poverty.  Yes, the brain -- in its middle-age fog, full of passwords and calendar dates and the shoe sizes of children -- may forget the squeeze of too-tight shoes with sprung seams and worn-flat soles, or the tickling drip of water from a wet dishcloth draped across the back of a neck to feign coolness when air conditioning is too expensive. The brain may forget poverty, but the body remembers. Photo by meo/Pexels   The brain may sweep the day's headlines for signs of an end to the dysfunction in government that holds paychecks for ransom. The brain may even acknowledge a comfortable safety net of savings that can pay the bills, but the body remembers the long brittle wait in anticipation of relief.  Then the body becomes a ball of knotted kite string perched on the back of a scratchy couch, the raised plaid yarns scoring a pattern of squares into knobby knees. The body recalls staring through a dusty window, harsh sunlight sla...

Forty is such a special time in a woman's life. Age spots blossom on your hands, your back aches for no reason, and if you're truly fortunate, you may begin to develop soft, jiggly jowls that small children can treat like Play-Doh. Yes, you're about to experience some wonderful developments! But don't be alarmed by the changes in your body as you mature from a young, vibrant woman to stale, middle-age goods. Some women may start this transition earlier than 40, and some may start later, so remember it's not a contest. It's all a natural part of growing old and being cast aside by society, a process every beautiful woman endures 30 or 40 years before finally dying. Perhaps the greatest rite of passage after turning 40 is going for your first annual mammogram. Also known as taking your sweater puppies to the vet, having your cans x-rayed every 12 months is an important screening exam to check for pesky cancer cells that can invade a woman's most private parts...

There's a saying in Texas that many (too many) women adhere to: "The bigger the hair, the closer to God."  But there's a lesser-known assertion that many teenagers believe: "The bigger the mum, the more you are loved."  In the Lonestar State, homecoming is not just about a football game under a wide twilit sky, a dance in a gym bedecked with ribbons and balloons, or dressing up in fancy clothes with your friends. It's about homecoming mums. Huge, showy homecoming mums. Legend has it that fall-blooming chrysanthemum corsages have been part of the homecoming tradition since the first homecoming football game, celebrated in Missouri in 1911. Back then, a male would bestow this gift to his female date to wear during the festivities that celebrated returning alumni and residents. Texas being Texas, they took it up a few notches. In 1936, a florist added school-color ribbons to the traditional corsage for a Baylor homecoming game. And a Texas icon was born.  ...

I see those parents dropping off their cherished children at college. I see photos of the family minivan - so recently scattered with Cheerios and Happy Meal toys - now filled to the windows with clothes, bedding, and furniture. I see dads manning a push-cart full of belongings up a sidewalk and into a dorm elevator. I see moms helping their children make the twin-sized bed, unfurl the curtains across the window, fold into drawers the clothes that suddenly seem so big and still so small. I see fierce goodbye hugs laced with tears, parents telling children to call home every single day to check in. A complicated potpourri of pride and joy and grief and embarrassment.  And I remember how my going-off-to-college experience looked nothing like that.  As a child of parents who couldn't be relied upon, I mostly did it alone. My dorm, 1998 I suppose I always assumed I'd go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I'd been told over and over that colleg...

It was at least 200 degrees under the shade trees of Central Pennsylvania, where I had just arrived to spend four glorious days at Writer Camp. Despite sitting on the Allegheny Plateau a thousand feet up, the temperature was high and the air felt soupy. Like it would be faster to swim than walk from one end of camp to the other. Either way, I'd end up soaking wet.  In the shared bunkhouse where I would sleep, it was a hundred degrees hotter. Cool air blowing from the window unit in the sitting area rarely made its way up to my top bunk beneath the slanted ceiling. I knew this going in, but I was still offended at the heat that blew back at me when I tossed my pillow, portable mini fan, and phone charger onto the bed. I hung a white towel, furnished by the camp, on the wooden post of the bunk, knowing it would never fully dry between showers. The problem Becky, camp coordinator extraordinaire, had kindly left two Andes chocolate mint candies on the bunk of each camper as a welcome g...

Once upon a time, on the zippered edge where two cities meet, there was a bra.  It was a bra of unremarkable color - darker than beige but lighter than mocha - whose cups stood proud if lonesome. It was a bra of indeterminate size - bigger than an A cup but smaller than Milwaukee. It was a bra with a story.  *Actual bra not pictured One May afternoon this bra suddenly found itself lounging in the westbound lane of Center Ridge Road, not far from a Taco Bell restaurant. Its hook-side pointed to one zip code; its eye-side, another. It was out of place in so many ways. But how did it get there?  Did it take flight from atop a load of laundry traveling in a cracked plastic hamper in the back seat of a 1998 Toyota Corolla, soaring through a rolled-down window to exciting lands unknown?  Had it been hastily stuffed into the cup holder of a late-model Mercedes during a moment of stolen passion, after which incriminating evidence had to be hastily discarded? Was it torn from...