I’m digging my hands in the dirt. On Saturday, October 16, I will climb the top of Spencer Butte Summit. I am so close, within…

I couldn't wait for my tenth birthday party. My mother had spent money she could ill afford on a big cake and some goodies to…

I’d take the city bus to her house. If I played it right, I’d have time to win my race, get home to change, catch…

Susan was a realist and a rationalist: She intuited early in life that the best kind of love she could hope for from a fellow…

When I was a kid, we still went to church as a family. Then everything changed in 1967, the year of the Summer of Love,…

How do you measure "enough?" I've looked everywhere – Ace Hardware, Amazon, Goodwill – for some apparatus that measures too little, too much, and in…

No matter how far apart I am from my girl friend, Christine, or how long it's been since we met, I know two things: when…

I’m always fascinated by pieces about somebody’s last day of life before an unexpected death. Alexander Hamilton, for example, had lunch plans on the day…

I knew a woman, Monica, who had three children in 39 months, all girls. I went to visit her with my one perfect toddler, she…

Susan prided herself on presenting professionally as a logical being, a methodical woman, a rationalist of the most extreme sort. This was the result of…

Who knew I’d find a magical treasure trove in the woods on the same trail I’ve traversed at least a hundred times. You just never…

Twirling my hair staring out the window eating toasted spice cake and drinking my coffee white and bitter. Like my late stepfather. He got real…