A Sad Story of Lost Keys on a Toasty Afternoon in Eau Gallie, Florida
Forty years ago, Lot, my ex-boyfriend of a few months, gives me a key ring from Serbia. It is a silver metal disc with an etched design, a surface both rough and smooth to the…
Big Sis/Little Bro
A man holds up a tiny baby in the window. It is April 13, 1961. The man is my father. The baby is my brother, Tom. I stand in the parking lot of Nathan Littauer…
A Llittle Llove Story
Love, Beth, Jim & Catsby is how I signed a batch of Valentine’s Day cards this year. Two things were unusual about this: 1. that I even sent Valentine’s Day cards; and 2. that I…
We Default to Kindness
“We default to kindness,” is how Scott Turow recently described his second marriage in a New York Times article, “Why Scott Turow Brought Back His Most Famous Hero: He ‘Changed My Life.’” When I read…
The After-Bill
Saturday, 1/1/22, 3:04 p.m. The phone rings. I’m shoving wet clothes into the dryer, so I let the answering machine pick up. Dad says, “Just checking in for the day. I just got back from…
Love With a Thousand Hearts: A Birthday and a Broken Air Conditioner in Cocoa Beach, Florida
Barbara Joan Kauper Henze gave birth to her first child, a bouncing baby boy, at 5:50 a.m. on July 12, 1949, in Lafayette, Indiana. By all accounts, baby Jim grew up in a loving household…
What a Time to be Alive! Life During Covid-19 and One Unintended Consequence of the 1918 Flu Pandemic
What a time to be alive!* Today was the first day in what seems like eons (but is really only weeks) that I awoke in the middle of the night to pee and I didn’t…
A Young Man, An Old(er) Woman and a Wayward Garbage Grabber in Cocoa Beach
About 3:45 p.m., at low tide, I bike to the beach. It’s not far, a three-minute walk, but I prefer to bike; it makes it easier to avoid talking to my neighbors. I pause here…
The Itch in Cocoa Beach, Florida
“It” started about two months ago. “It” is for itch, a full-body, no-rash itching – what I imagine our cats felt like after we adopted number three, Catsby, who in addition to disturbing the equilibrium…
Waiting for Dorian
Tuesday, September 3, 7:46 a.m. Weird weather. Squally one minute, sunny the next. Gray sky, blue sky. The wind flings palm fronds down on the driveway. I slip into Jim’s office, plop on the bed…