My grandmother lost her mind sometime before 2012.  When she made that first inexorable step I will never be sure.  In retrospect the free fall plunge to dementia began maybe a decade ago, the small increments of memory and her awareness of their loss transforming her forever.  I spent… Read full post »

My grandmother lost her mind sometime before 2012.  When she made that first inexorable step I will never be sure.  In retrospect the free fall plunge to dementia began maybe a decade ago, the small increments of memory and her awareness of their loss transforming her forever.  I spent… Read full post »

"Insecurity" was the consolation prize handed even to a person who had an obvious and immutable imperfection, usually that they were ugly, poor or dumb.  The concept was indigenous to Europe, where it was both customary and necessary to absolve the collective guilt of a self-obsessed “do o… Read full post »

In the fourth grade a new boy moved to town.  To the rest, he came from somewhere exotic. Kansas.  He was taller than the rest of us and wore very short shorts, white and almost obscene.   I was told to show him the ropes.  Our fourth grade teacher had… Read full post »

      In the dust and the haze of the Sonoran summer, in the dead of the afternoon, in that hour before dusk when the heat flattened the horizon into a receding slick, Eugenio walked from his shed in the field into the back yard, stood on the middle of

… Read full post »

Rework and expansion of last post, working towards developing the story.   

Criticism is welcome.

     In the dust and the haze of the Sonoran summer, in the dead of the afternoon, in that hour when the heat flattened the horizon into a receding slick, Eugenio w… Read full post »

In the dust and the haze of a Sonoran summer, in the dead of the afternoon, in that hour when the heat flattened the horizon into a receding slick, Eugenio walked from his shed in the field into the back yard, sat on the middle… Read full post »

Eulogy given January 27, 2008 by me.  Still the hardest thing I ever wrote and forever doomed to seem inadequate.  

Illness was a part of my Uncle’s life ever since he was first diagnosed with lymphoma as a teenager.  Everyone here knows that history to some… Read full post »

"That impossible, I want you inside me."

  I moved to San Francisco to start a life.

"You couldn't stop me." 

I moved to San Francisco to find a career. 

 … Read full post »

The Other Woman

1. Jenny

My mother buys a BMW when I am in kindergarten.  She picks a rust colored exterior, with a beige upholstered interior.  You can see my mom’s head over the steering wheel when she drives.  My grandmother’s entire/… Read full post »

The first time I visited my grandfather at the home, it was too little too late.  He didn’t remember me.  It was Thanksgiving 2004 and I hadn’t been to see him since the daily falling made caring for him at home an impossibility; my grandmother unable to lift him with her… Read full post »

 Part, I: Vigil 

Marco hears his first prayer at his great grandmother’s vigil.  His aunts incant The Apostle’s Creed in Spanish.  The words roll off their tongues, their diction is frenetic.  Marco is mesmerized.  The words seem older than anything he has ev/… Read full post »

My Uncle Steve is transgender and goes by the name Sandy. 

Sandy is my aunt, es mi Tía Sandy. 

When she is 13 and dressed like a boy, Sandy comes home from high school and tells his mother that she is a woman trapped in a mans body.  Sandy tells/… Read full post »

Today was hectic.  I was Tippi Hedron in The  Birds.  Tippi in scene in front of the school house, right when the crows explode off the jungle gym--right when the children sing and scream and and run. 

 I would runaway if I could , but I just broke a fucking… Read full post »

     The women in my family never wear crosses or religious jewelry. My grandmother says they look cheap.  Her accent is heavy. She does not want to look like a superstitious Mexican.  She will, however, hide a saint anywhere. Each of her purses has one sewn into it… Read full post »

Being pegged a good listener has its downside.

When I was thirteen, my grandfather spoke to me, man to man, over a game of tennis about his sexual frustrations with my grandmother. I was gathering the balls that had collected three feet from the net when he started. He walked… Read full post »

[Please note there is graphic language here.  It is a true story and was unavoidable.  No intent to offend on my part.]

On a hot Saturday night, my first summer home from college, my mother and I drank an entire bottle of vodka.  Afterwards, we… Read full post »

 A few mornings ago I walked into right into a gays in the military discussion.   

I didn't get two feet into the room before I was asked "You agree with Obama that now is not the time to allow gays in the military because of everything else going on… Read full post »

After taking their time to diagnose the lymphoma, the doctors wasted no time making the terminal prognosis.

“You have six months to live.”

The news did not cause Steve to take stock or adjust his priorities. The news didn’t springboard him into acceptance or contemplative enlighte… Read full post »

Steve felt the lump while wiping his underarm with a washcloth, the growth presenting underneath a terry champagne shroud. He said nothing to anyone for a month. Several times a day, Steve would check to see if it was still there.

Sometimes Steve thought the lump was bigger, at… Read full post »

I went to a cemetery on Easter Sunday.

The place was not pedestrian friendly and had no sidewalks. It was crowded. Everyone but a single jogger, and me, arrived in a car.

I walked up a series of empty hills to my uncle. The graves were old, the dead never knowing the… Read full post »

Marco had moles. His skin looked like a real time photograph of space, the infinite lights blending together in undifferentiated dullness and punctuated scattershot by celestial happenings, predicates on the make. Nova. Class D Star. Black hole. Collision of quarks. He used to wonder if he was meant… Read full post »

Hugo did not eat Jellybeans because he liked them. He ate jellybeans because they bought notoriety, an eccentric quirk of character.  Ever since he took on the distinction, Hugo received jellybeans for birthdays, anniversaries, christenings, Easter, Christmas, and Halloween. He would later be bu… Read full post »