I take a bus to the city where my mother was born to sit with my aunt on her deathbed. Before we go to her, my older cousins drive me to the family house to drop off my single carry-on and maybe eat. “I’m just going to get a glass of water,” I say. “Rinse… Continue reading A small grief on the subject of home
Category: Personal Narrative
A small grief on the subject of belonging
My aunt passed away this fall--on Thanksgiving Day, actually. It was both sudden and not: she had been sick and struggling for some time and had elected to transition into hospice care, but no one expected to lose her that day, that week. Unlike the rest of us, my aunt was slight in stature, short… Continue reading A small grief on the subject of belonging
Triangles and Quadrants
1. My office is on a street of science centers, so I will occasionally drop by labs to participate in research studies. Lately I've been doing a sequence of smell studies for which I am given a tray of anonymous brown bottles which each contain a few drops of colorless, oily liquid. I have to… Continue reading Triangles and Quadrants
An intention for 2020
My family (well, really my mother) has established a New Year tradition for the last few calendar years: pick one word. Verbs are good; some nouns work too. Choosing your word is like setting your intention at the beginning of a yoga class: it's the one thing you most want to find, or aspire to,… Continue reading An intention for 2020
Pandora’s Music Box
In 2015, when my friends were curating Spotify playlists to listen to on their smartphones, I still listened to CDs and the same three Pandora stations I created when I registered in 2009 and could only seed channels with musical concepts. One of my stations was exclusively for classical and modernist instrumentals--study music. One featured… Continue reading Pandora’s Music Box
Failure Landscape
There's a story I sometimes tell about myself (or tell on myself, perhaps). I minored in art as an undergraduate. The long studio hours tried my patience, but I craved the repetitive tactile sensations of building or painting. In my first sculpture class, the instructor provided basic safety instructions for all the tools and machines… Continue reading Failure Landscape
