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...

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...

When I walk downstairs, I touch the handrail on my right as I go. It's not a conscious thought, just a place to grab and steady myself as I take a first step. Neither my grip nor the weight of my hand is strong, and my palm is against the wood for only a second. But after six-and-a-half years, there's a faint yet noticeable spot of wear on the railing from my regular touches. A few inches of dark cherry stain is beginning to rub away, revealing the lighter oak underneath. It's indelible proof of a habit I didn't realize I had, because it had become so routine.  I am here. As a woman, as a mom, I often feel invisible. Clean laundry magically appears in the basket, sinks mysteriously become wiped spotless, permission slips miraculously show up signed and tucked into folders. Little thought is given, even by me, to the things I touch every day.  I recently noticed this mark on the railing and wondered where it had come from, then realized it's me - it's evidence of...

The weight was almost unmanageable.   When I was young my mother owned a manual typewriter, all metal and heft. It came in a box like a suitcase with a latch and plastic handle, and I was certain it weighed more than I did.  The machine itself was cream and gray with seafoam-green accents straight out of the 1960s. It smelled of ink and machine oil. Trapezoid keytops bore letters in a san-serif font on heavy plastic, and there was no number 1 - my mom explained the lowercase L doubled for the number. The keybasket where all the typebars come together was embossed with the silver words "De Luxe" atop a wash of seafoam.  The keys didn't yield like computer keyboards nowadays - back then if I wanted to communicate I had to put effort behind it, jam my point home with just my index fingers. On that machine my mom taught me my first typed sentence, about the goings-on of a quick red fox and a lazy brown dog.  I didn't have much else to write about in elementary school. I ...

"Enough psychiatric prescriptions are written each year to give one to every person in America. If we are treating everyone, what are we really treating? Life? Because life isn't a symptom." Four years ago, these words were spat at me by a miserable man trying to pass himself off as a psychiatrist employed by the No. 2 hospital system in the world.  Last Friday, his voice echoed through my head while I stared at my bottle of alprazolam. Brand name: Xanax.  My anxiety first showed up in grade school and was thought to be a "nervous stomach." The kind of stomach that prevented me from eating out in public because I would become so nervous that I'd vomit.  By high school I suffered panic attacks that left me sitting on cold tile floors, sweating and shaking and fighting nausea. As an adult, I learned yoga breathing and coping strategies. Still, I occasionally get so upset or anxious that I run back and forth to the bathroom with bowel complaints.  Thanks to co...

On those few blessed mornings a week that my house is as still as an empty auditorium, I sit at the computer and ask the words to dance. Some days they tango. Most times they stand defiantly on skinny legs and glare at me.  On days like today, I have the audacity to poke them until they move. Life is almost pre-pandemic normal-busy-overwhelming , and already I'm worn out. Kids, job, household, wife - it's a frenzied four-step hustle. I'm not funny. I'm not insightful. My heels blister. And I'm doing a terrible job of writing and submitting regularly. If I don't scribble out essays for publishing, am I still a writer? Are my words still real if nobody reads them?  What does being a writer actually mean?

Some people collect comic books, or vinyl records, or refrigerator magnets. I collect words.  In the fall of 1998, my first semester in college, my best friend urged me to start a quote book. We shared an infatuation with the first two Counting Crows albums, dripping tortured lyrics that, in the throes of early adult angst, spoke to our souls. Adam Duritz sings words you can't help but pay homage to by writing them down for yourself. Suddenly I saw the world was full of words I needed to keep. So I dug out an old hardcover journal I had been gifted in high school. With the inspirational Footprints poem on the cover, it wasn't really my style, but it had 168 lined pages ready to absorb meaningful, beautiful words, and I obliged. I wanted a list of expressive and evocative quotations that said I wasn't alone, and snapshots of the memories I might someday forget. The very first quote I wrote down was, "Your past is where you came from, not who you are." It told me, i...