Back when I get COVID -
I haven’t fully processed what I’m going through or how I’m feeling, but a few words come to mind - grim and dark and unkind and daunting.
I had given the gift of life many times before – in fact, 15 times before since 2007 in places like fire stations and shopping malls. But this time, it was different. This act of service changed [...]
The number 32 flashes on the screen of the black telephone sitting at the back corner of the desk. The green light flickers on and off, on and off.
“32, 32, 32 unread messages”, it [...]
A week before my father dies, I dream he wants me to take him to the river. There’s no river where he lives in downtown D.C. There’s a large block that we walk around, when he’s up for it, down [...]
Quarandream, Deferred When the pandemic began life stopped. I don’t think anyone could envision what was to come. I thought, I’ll spend two weeks at home and give my house the cleaning it’s [...]
Saturday morning Jon and I leave our hotel and walk the one block to the beach. We’re on our first trip since shelter-in-place began, a one-night sojourn to Santa Cruz for our anniversary. The [...]
Graduating from college during a pandemic was anticlimactic in many ways. Instead of the big family party we had planned, my parents and I ordered takeout to celebrate the night after my senior [...]
It is not that living through a pandemic was prompting an existential crisis. I simply felt a profound need for something new in my life. I needed to feel free again.
On March 11, 2020, the bomb dropped, cracks opened across my world, disorientation and panic set in, and overnight everything was different. Nature waxed poetic whenever I stepped outside. Food [...]
“A tear in cloth can be too large for a patch” says the Pashtun proverb. Recalling his UN fieldwork in a country where peace and economic prosperity seemed impossible, my colleague’s fingers [...]
