Joy
“Live in joy even though you know all the facts.” It’s been a hell of a new year already. Trump and his cohorts have invaded Venezuela, killed Renee Good, yanked elderly undressed men from their…
Category: Essays
Ana #4 – Banana Bread
I am a legend in my own head for wasting bananas. I purchase them with some frequency, intending to be “good” and improve my diet. Then, when they start to brown and spot, I plop…
Blow-Up
Nothing says Christmas quite as succinctly as a yard full of deflated blow-up holiday characters. A flaccid Santa tumbling over his stomach. Sprawl-legged reindeer still in harness. Some unidentifiable characters like a Smurf-elf—a smelf—in a puddled mess. A…
WHAT NOW!!!
I’ve pulled the kantha quilt up over the bed—quickly so as to keep Tuxedo from nesting in the sheets. Though the forecast called for a thick cloud cover and snow, there’s a bit of sun…
What Do I Know?
What do I know, really, of India? That chefs, clad in sparkling white clothes and towering toques, came out often to greet us and ask how we found the food. That every driver who piloted…
Anas #3 – A Gift of Beauty
I’ve long since told you about my introduction to graduate school at the University of Oregon: deaf landlady, garret room with a naked lightbulb, one refrigerator shelf, reading assignments triple those that I’d experienced in college,…
It’s Complicated
My father, Paul Sherfy, died on February 24, 2002, at eighty-nine in the health-care wing of the Cedars Retirement Community—a Church of the Brethren facility in McPherson, Kansas. I’d seen my dad several weeks before his…
Marcella’s Thoughts on Sorting, Discarding, and Treasuring Sh*t
There appears to be good money in writing a book on how to manage all the belongings that we collect. Most recently, I succumbed to downloading Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You…
Ideals
I am ancient. When I was born in 1946, electricity hadn’t arrived at many rural farms. Party telephone lines connected outlying families. Visitors arrived in McPherson on trains. Our family was a decade away from…
Homesick
I’m homesick. Not for Kansas. Or Oregon’s ill-lit garret and steady rain. Or the terror I knew every day facing juniors in my US History classes at Francis Scott Key High School. Or the fear…