Within 48 hours, I'll see my father again, first time in fourteen years.

He has become one of those keepsakes on a high shelf, the sort you never touch or talk about.  You dust it periodically.  It means something, but you can't put it into words, so you just hang on.

I wrote last week that I'd call him when I arrive in Fort Worth tomorrow, and I've decided to invite him to my hotel for lunch, before he's had too much to drink, so we can talk about now and…

Three loud alarms sound at the beginning of each image series, consecutive and from different directions.  They are sounds I associate with danger, with nuclear reactors exploding, bomb raids and airplanes going down.

The narrow tunnel is longer than I am, a white coffin lit from the inside though how can I know this with my eyes squeezed shut?

I hold tight a small rubber ball attached to a wire, a "panic" device I have been instructed to squeeze if I…

Gerald only wanted to be good.

In the beginning they happened ten to twelve times a day, prayers sent with his eyes open toward a clear patch of blue sky or a section of unblemished white wall.  When he decided he must genuflect before each prayer it became too much of a spectacle, so Gerald prayed for God's permission to genuflect with a single finger deep inside a pants pocket.

To compensate for the unusual change in ritual he would genuflect with both hands…

The "Mind" line of my right palm swoops in a downward arc, a sign of creativity.  My "Heart" line begins as a broken chain that stretches across the pinkie or Mercury, past Apollo and Saturn, then it thins and smooths, runs a clean course toward Jupiter.

My "Life" line is decent until the lower part near the Venus mound where the chains return, perhaps an illness.  Then there is a sudden break, a gap, before the line proceeds again, unbroken.

I have a…

Her name is Ramsha.  She is Christian.

She was accused of burning pages of the Koran, though there is lack of evidence.

She was arrested on August 16 for blasphemy after hundreds of Muslim men descended on her home in an impoverished…

All I said to Derrick was, "She's had a bad day so, if you could just make her smile."

At that, the waiter got down on one knee, took my pregnant daughter's hand and said, "So tell me, baby-daddy trouble?"

After showing us pictures of his niece and answering questions about his recent move from Navy to college, he turned back to my daughter, suddenly placed a hand firmly on her forehead and bellowed, "Be gone, ye demons!!"

Soon there…

After watching Andy do Elvis on Carson, I watched SNL's Gilda with pyramid hair, then the Beatles sang Yesterday. 

Buffy clung to a spectacled Mrs. Beasley after the initial kaleidescope swirl, the "Everyone wants a Slinky..." walked magically down stairs, St. Joseph's Children's Aspirin was a kid's #1 fever relief and heaven was a scoop of orange sherbet from Ashburns on Rosedale Avenue. 

Fort Worth's Harold Taft of WBAP's Channel 5 slapped magnetic…

"What do you think happens when we die?" Beast asked last Monday as we drove through the small town of Rosenberg, Texas.

"Nothing much," I answered, feeling guilty for raining on any glamerous afterlife hopes the eighty-three year old still has.  So I added, "But Steve Jobs had some interesting last words when he died, 'Wow...just wow', but still, until I get a nice postcard from the great beyond, I'm not placing any bets." 

As we drove past a business with a…

When we talk about intimate issues, relationships of any kind, my father-in-law stares at his plump brown hands as they fidget with small meaningless objects, his mind busy forming more important words to interrupt whatever I'm saying. 

He told a story last weekend that he's told me many times before, about how envious his family is of each other's successes, but as always he only mentions his own, "I was the only one in my family to be an altar boy and boy scout, the first…

My father-in-law left Tuesday morning after a short visit.  The eighty-three year old is hoping his life will improve significantly since the bed he shared with his ex-wife for twenty-three years was finally hauled out of his garage over the weekend, a symbol of her infidelity almost a quarter of a century ago.

He still believes the ex cursed him to a lifetime of loneliness, that she assigned demons and an assortment of annoying spirits to follow him around, even to my…

At Astroworld she peed on herself while talking with a group of coworkers but never stopped talking or smiling, like nothing happened, so we pretended too.

One afternoon she got drunk earlier than usual and took her kids to the pet store at Houston's Galleria where she bought an Akita, Pug and Golden Retriever; the next morning she sobered up and gave them…

Go ahead and eat it -- I hate the texture. 

No, I took it off cuz of the tag, the scratchy material.

No, I hear you.  I speak bird.  I speak everything.  Except words. 

Buck and Mary drove us back to their house where my former husband drank another vodka tonic and I pretended not to see the subtle play between Mary and the male babysitter, their eyes locked and heat rising up from the brown leather sofa cushions.

One year later the divorced thirty-eight year old explained to us how she could be so in love with with a fifteen year old, while forty-four year old Buck was busy courting Tina, a twenty-something with mischievous green eyes,…

The tall thirty-something woman wore a big fake diamond pendant, probably three by five inches across, that read:  JESUS.

I felt victoriously thin that day, a divorce consolation wrapped in a tailored off-white dress, big 80's shoulder pads; I'd shrunk from size 8 to 2 after imagining for weeks my ex having 'round the clock sex with Stephanie, his mistress, "adorable" for her ability to blow her hair into so many interesting shapes and talk in tiny squeaks to her plants and…

Life is always about one of two things, which may be the same thing:  1) Getting something or 2) Getting rid of something.

We eat, go to church, go to school, marry, exercise.  

We get rid of hunger, rid of sin, rid of ignorance, rid of loneliness, rid of loose flab. 

We get full, get heaven, get smart, get love, get strong.

The urge to get or get rid of anything usually begins with a minor PAIN, a language…

Today, the gym, then phone calls to doctors to confirm appointment dates I can't remember, then new school uniforms for my first grader, a Whole Foods run, the drycleaner, GNC and a nap I already want to take.

And I'd like to invite you all to attend the Stella & Dot jewelry show I'm hosting for a friend on 8/23, but I know it's a long drive and you'll probably wonder why I never put curtains up in the formal living room anyway, I mean, it's been ten years and all -- why…

There is a wooden door from a shed built in the 1780's, moved from Chappaquiddick in the 1800's and now on display at the Martha's Vineyard Museum in Edgartown; the messages on the door are handwritten, changes in weather and unique events chronicled, like storms and harbor freezes. 

One week ago I stood before the door as if it were the communal grave of those who once gathered behind it for shelter and to tell stories, then I ignored the DO NOT TOUCH sign and placed my…