Sep 08, 2021
Traveling With My Parents Taught Me “Growing Up” Is Not “Growing Old”
My parents were old. It was time to take seriously the last years we had left. That is not, of course, how they saw things.
My parents were old. It was time to take seriously the last years we had left. That is not, of course, how they saw things.
On the plane, I felt the tension of visiting so many unspoken truths.
Bogotá has the largest network of cycling infrastructure in Latin America. It is a city that begs to be biked.
Across the thousands of miles, and the hundreds of years of historical and cultural distance, Albertine and I had our hair in common.
The spirit of manifest destiny has been rebranded into the travelogue.
Out on the road and in the great outdoors my dad and I discovered we were more like each other than we believed.
My heart is set on the Philly cheesesteak—the only one, I’m certain, to be found in India.
The problem, of course, is that the public toilet involves doing the private in public.
As a person who spends a lot of her time reading, writing, and teaching about endangered creatures and environments, I craved something hopeful.
Will the vertigo again become acute? Will the stress of this, or some root cause that spurs it, end my life before it might otherwise end?
It’s Nigeria, after all. Hope is what keeps many alive. In plethora of sufferings and fears, prayers abound.
We pass other boats and, from each one, there is the double-take, a stare. Two boats full of only black people is apparently a rare sight.
We were three single Americans with a whiskey handle. What reception would we wake to if we fall asleep on the wrong sand?
The roadside cross is a jarring balance of the emotional poles, internal and external, surely an action by and for the remaining soul—not the one who has departed.
For me, loss of faith was hollowing. Can you believe in miracles without believing in God?
Collecting and burning wood, I felt close to my family. It was something tangible, something that kept us warm.
The state bird of Alabama is the yellowhammer, and the state game bird is the turkey. One bird for beauty, and one to blow up.
“Being disabled my entire life, I have yet to experience the kind of loss that MM must feel. To me, disability is the norm.”
Meeting a fellow writer you admire in search of approval and permission.
“The feeling of being out on my own is worth all the fear I must fight to get there.”
