Perspectives
Essays on gratitude, perspective shifts, and finding meaning in the small things.
Piano
I don't know what made me do it. It could have been my emotions running high from the difficult interaction I had at work that day. Maybe it was watching (really watching) my 6-year-old rehearse a piano piece from memory. I sat down at my 20-year-old electric...
The T-Shirt Drawer
During the Kon Mari tidying craze, I went through the shirts in my T-shirt drawer and got rid of the ones I never wore, or didn't like, or that didn't "spark joy." I re-folded and arranged the survivors of the great purge, so they were standing in the drawer in neat...
How to Live on an Island
For the last five years, I’ve lived on an island. It’s not the kind of island you might be imagining, with cerulean water, white sands, and resorts for miles; it’s a small barrier island off the upper Texas coast, with surf turned bluish-brown by the currents of the...
Carnival in the Time of Covid
The other day, I stood whooping for beads, arms waving, with a baby on my hip, as I watched one my town's local Mardi Gras parades march past. I reached for a juice box for my youngest, and I looked up to see float riders passing by, dressed in plague doctor masks....
Why I Started Writing
I've been writing since, well, I could write. In elementary school, I wrote a book of poems about everything from penguins, to why I hated school. They were cute and pithy and terrible and by God I made those verses rhyme. In third grade, we got to write a story,...
Feet in the Grass
When I feel as if the world might pull me under, I put my feet in the grass. And since I live on a barrier island on the Gulf Coast, I can do this pretty much year round. If I have shoes or socks on, I take them off. I find a green spot in the sun and I engage in...