When someone offers to say a prayer for us, can it be offensive? My religion-skeptic father is seriously ill. One of his friends prayed for him right there in the hospital room, while another said she would do so on her own. Ever unwilling to rock
Family
Collected Excerpts from my Darien High School Memoir
This 73-page post is a compilation of the nineteen excerpts from my unpublished Darien High School memoir that I posted individually to my website between May and November of 2018. To repeat, almost all names are changed, along with some personal
Blue Sky Over Texas
1 In yards opposite each other on a Texas suburban street were a Ted Cruz and a Beto O’Rourke sign. My wife’s brother fantasized about going out in the middle of the night and switching the signs. But he’d told them about it and so couldn’t act on
Green-Wood
That Friday afternoon last month, a Green-Wood Cemetery employee named Katie escorted Laura and me as we toured options for our future remains. We walked from buildings to open areas with ponds and vistas, on to another building, and then to yet
Grandma: A Reminiscence
The gulf in experience between Grandma Spratt and me is captured in two words from her letter of July 18, 1977: “at Wisconsin.” She lived in the town of Darlington, England. When I was four, my parents, brother and I, who were all born there, moved
Legacy of a Cat
Fifty years ago this month, my parents told my brother and me that we were to emigrate to the United States in November. Within weeks, our cat Monty, who had been on this earth two years longer than me, died. He didn’t die in order to become a symbol