I’ve been thinking a lot about an old English teacher, Faye Hardin, who passed away in 2019. She was a tough old bag. Some twenty years ago when I had her my senior year, there were students in my class whose parents and grandparents had her as a teacher. She pushed students harder than most–to […]
Tag: relationships
Sister
They say your brother or sister is generally the person you will know longer than any other human being. My sister and I started that off on the right foot. Four years apart, I’m pretty sure the first dozen or so of my life, all we did was bicker. There was the time she pushed […]
Facing a little anxiety, or the time I accidentally took Daisy Mae’s pills
From the door of my apartment, the train station is almost exactly a seven minute walk. That’s five-and-a-half blocks and crossing the street once. The walk passes a gas station, a bagel shop (with terrible service but the best bagels you’ve ever had), multiple laundry mats and auto part stores, several residences, and at least […]
Making Kin, or why every family must adopt
If you were to ask folks how you go about creating a family, the most common answer would almost certainly have something to do with marriage and sex. Sure, there are other ways to start a family, like adoption, but given that adoptions only account for between 2-4% of American families today, it’s no surprise […]
Turning Points
This morning, I sat in the cafe next to the taxi station with Caity, Avery, Nicole, and Jonathan. It’s weird. The past few months have been, in some ways, building up to their final morning in Outat. And now that it’s here and gone, none of it seems real. We waited for Caity’s taxi to […]
Friendship, Fate, and Responsibility
Yesterday, Khalil sat down next to me on the couch and handed me a small multi-colored bouncy ball, insisting that we should play soccer with our fingers. After we set up a makeshift field using a remote control, phone, and a few pens, we “kicked” the ball around for about twenty minutes laughing and wrestling […]
