Art has repaid me like this It took me years to admit to myself that I am an artist. I have a BS in public health, I knew no artists. But part of my first job out of college was…

My somewhat pompous Uncle Bill once explained to me that “Art” was more than drawing. I was around seven, an age when I listened to him, although even then I thought he was a bit overbearing. Art, he said, was…

I woke up this morning thinking about the piano. How sometimes, the music sounds like the flit flit flit of butterflies rings. Or the drop drop drop of rain. Sometimes, if feeling has a sound--not the screech of anger, but…

I walked into the room of ghosts, of people from my past, in theory from my present. I mostly saw the faces of people I don't care to talk to, and of the people I would have wanted to see,…

Agatha awoke. She was hungry. She made breakfast. One piece of toast and jam, no butter. Cold milk. Agatha was still hungry. Agatha knew that she could scream, and her voice would bounce off the walls and echo into the…

We oozed through customs at Lagos International Airport, three separate stops where bags, day packs and purses were examined, with indistinguishable differences between any of the stops. We'd been in the plane from San Francisco for what seemed like an…

I live here in San Francisco. I feel I have always lived here. Except when I lived on Burnt Mill Road, an experience that screams to me in technicolor: my youth, my prime, the colors, the grass, dry and scrappy,…

After the sun stood strong, Agatha returned to the White House. She entered quietly. Mutti had made potato pancakes for breakfast. Herr Finkham was seated at the table, resting his left leg. They greeted her as if she always went…

Years ago, well over a decade, I had a brush with cancer. A capsulized 100 days at the start of one Summer, resolved without chemo or radiation at the start of the subsequent Fall, I was fortunate because it was…

The life she planned isn't the one she got. The dream of being Dr. Suji, of healing people with her sharp mind and good heart, was not to be. As she emptied Mrs. Gleeson's bedpan, the patient in the neighboring…

I’ve begun the task, necessary, of packing my own suitcase for when you are the one leaving. Really just an old treasure trunk I’m placing gently in the corner of this room, me not going anywhere. I’ve made a short…

Pain is a flower, and I am in bloom this morning. I’ve been, for the past 10 days, climbing those wooden steps each morning (there aren’t many) in the Cape house to put on the coffee for Pam and me.…