“He told of how the trees had grown in all sorts of conditions, endured lightning strikes and windstorms and infestations. [The boat builder] said the wood taught us about survival, about overcoming difficulty, but it also taught us about the reason for surviving in the first place. Something about infinite beauty, about things larger and… Read More Happy Hard Year
How is it that Facebook famously feeds depression? The Happiest Virtual Place On Earth can feel like one endless reminder of the Things That Are Missing in our life. Offline, I look at the people around me. My single friends would give an arm to be married. Those with families of their own each have… Read More Why Everybody Else Is Happier Than You
1. Develop amnesia. Find some way to forget what he did. Or (again) didn’t do. Go without sleep or spin 50 times to reduce cognitive faculty. Stick a finger in the socket. 2. If biting your tongue hurts too much, pop some chocolate. Sure, every time. 3. Lie. Tell yourself he’s listening. The short-lived delusion… Read More Secrets to a Happy Marriage: For Women
Now, why’s the AC dying again? We just fixed it. Weird. Car’s sluggish, too. Mph: 70. 60. 50. 45. Ok. Gotta pull over. I run the hazard lights and crawl over two lanes to the shoulder – just in time. The Sienna gives out and it takes me a minute to realize the hood’s smoking.… Read More STRANDED
Forty-two days after burning in a fatal crash, Niki Lauda jumped back on the Formula 1 track to defend his championship title against James Hunt. Single-mindedness. Insane resolve. I wasn’t into racing, but this was my kind of story. The film Rush opens with a portrait of Hunt as a handsome, charismatic, successful racer with… Read More Greatness: Till Death Do You Part
How many songs do you still know from high school? The old band – cooler than ice cream in its day – revs up the radio and you’re right back, lyrics sure after all these years. Which is why Holistic Boy learns a lot of things through music. He had the optional challenge of memorizing… Read More Exodus
I caught crickets with the boy you would marry. “I’ll give you a quarter for the Queen,” I offered, and he dispensed the prize insects in glass Coke bottles. My cousins got to keep theirs on the fire escape but aghast at the sight of black crawlies in her home, Mom threw mine down the… Read More A Million Signatures of Friendship
By the second week I learned that Texans sweat as much as the French, and swear even more, that you couldn’t fight one twin without taking on the other. But the librarian would slip me the choicest donated fiction, and I played baseball every day in the vacant lot until sundown called the players home to black… Read More Bonjour, Texas: Summer 1966
Voices in my house can be loud lately. Or hushed. Both scare me. I like a happy medium. When my sister sits in the bathtub in the dark, she tells me she is reading. I am small, not stupid. No reading happens in the dark. And I sense pain coming off of her. At age… Read More Day of Magic
March 6 Mrs: (Exasperated by the A.D.D.) Mr: It’s been 11 yrs. Mrs: (Thinking no kidding.) Mr: You should be used to it by now. Mrs: *Disbelief* March 20 Mr: I realized you have your own love language. You love me by serving [not with words or gestures of affection]. When you make me food… Read More The Things You Lose in Marriage
A Holistic Journey 