Still Learning How to Fly

Tiny – a dynamo at less than 100 pounds – Kay began and ended my summers for the last dozen years. I was an-almost-there, rest-up stop on her way from Hallock, Minnesota, to West Glacier….

love is a place ee cummings love is a place& through this place oflove move(with brightness of peace)all places yes is a world& in this world ofyes live(skilfully curled)all worlds       Whitepages Inc. just emailed…

I smile when I tell the story. And for too long never really saw that conversations quieted, that listeners heard the sow’s ear of pain I’d lovingly tried to disguise as a silk purse of…

Not an afterlife, I think. For certain not one presided over by the Specter, by mercurial and personal preferences, For certain not a celestial cocktail party where Dave’s first three wives and assorted camp followers…

The scene’s seared into my soul. Mother in our kitchen on Choteau Street.  She’s leaning up against the counter. I’m trying to visit with her and wrangle a meal.  My mind’s in at least two…

I moved to Helena in June 1980.  New colleagues had the summer to scare me with winter survival stories.  By August, I was an easy mark for the ladies’ wear clerk at Hennessey’s who steered…

Whose mojo is drama and whose by-words have always been “what next?”  Her four-year-old-self all sass—stands in the photo in my hall, blonde pig tails flying, socks yanked up to her knees, hands on her…

Came into my life hanging onto her dad’s hand, hopping across the Thrifty Scot Motel parking lot that first uneasy visitation weekend.   It was April 1982 and I was just learning Dave’s measure and that…

At Dave’s memorial service at St. Peter’s Methodist Church, I arranged three of pairs of his shoes beneath the altar—a nontraditional centerpiece.  I didn’t include the dusty black, back-of-the-closet wedding and funeral dress pair. But…