January 1999
Anniversaries
Painting a fence, celebrating the silver anniversary of a friendship, running through the house naked
Sunbeams
Magazines all too often lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.
I Don’t Have All Night
Yet even here, at one of the more innovative schools in the country, graduation was still . . . graduation. Even here, at the end of the most violent century in history, graduates were exhorted in the usual ways to step across the mass graves and the poisoned waters and the broken vows. Step lively, the speakers told them.
Perpetual Motion
Every spring for ten years, Da told me he was dying. The pattern was always the same. For the next three months he’d plan and revise his funeral, then patiently await his demise on July 15, the anniversary of Mother’s death. Despite his determination, the worst illness he could muster was a tiny patch of skin cancer one year, which the doctor removed during an office visit.