Drowning in Denouement - Russian Novel Life

Will I get fat and be content to raise my children well? And what would be wrong with that? People do it every day. I think maybe it's the loss of some kind of sensibility, the blindness to life, the inability to taste and savour everything around you.

It's the SUV, McDonald's and Microsoft life---cardboard in your mouth and eyes. How can I live a life I didn't choose to live? How can I choose a life that sacrifices what I hold so dear? I believe the answer lies somewhere in between---perhaps a series of small tradeoffs towards a mundane, mediocre existence? Can they be reconciled? The desire and the loss?

My Matriarch Mae --- a eulogy for my grandmother

There is a woman I’ve had the great privilege to know during my so-far brief time here. Her name is Mae. She is my grandmother.

When I think about her now at her passing, there are many things I remember about her…from stories she told me, stories I’ve been told, experiences I shared with her, and impressions from old photographs.

Mae… the first girl in her town to wear a halter top and short shorts…those long, perfectly painted pink fingernails, and long, long legs (from which many of us have benefited.) I imagine her in her youth…beautiful from photos I’ve seen, a young mother sent on her way to hard times, but determined to make the best life she could for herself and her children. Sometimes it was really, really good.