When life presents you with a sinkhole
We sip our drinks and munch on fresh-cut veggies with homemade hummus while sitting on the terrace, facing the Three Ridges Wilderness area. It’s late Friday afternoon, the end of the week, time to kick back and relax before supper. Inside the house, Heathcliff...
Close Encounter of the Snake Kind
“Keith, Keith! Look out the dormer window!” “What? Where?” “There’s a snake draped on top of the tomato trellis above the square foot garden.” “I see it now. Maybe its hunting birds or camouflaging itself against hawks.” Birds often perched on the trellis. And a...
Stay in the story
A couple of weeks ago, a wood thrush banged into one of our windows. Other birds have done the same and recovered, like last summer’s Scarlet Tanager and more recently, this yellow-bellied sapsucker. Keith and I had not seen wood thrushes here at Vanaprastha,...
The Moment of Lift
One day, spring semester 1981 in my American Humanities class at Ursuline Academy of Dallas, we viewed a slide of Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Child. As a young and somewhat pretentious teacher, I pronounced Cassatt’s last name in French—apologies to my students....
Stubbornness
“Freya, come,” I called out the kitchen door. Though Heathcliff came and waited inside the door, she trotted in the opposite direction. Apparently, she wanted to run and bark a little longer before breakfast. “Heathcliff, sit,” I said, holding his food bowl above...
April Showers Can Be Taxing
Though April showers may come your way They bring the flowers that bloom in May Did I see lightning first last night or hear thunder? No matter. I knew the click-click of dog toe tails on the wood floor was Freya, leaving our bedroom, because...