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Death of the Shopping Cart Man: Part 3 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
The Shopping Cart Man is dead. The news spreads in whispered conversations held over garden fences and rose hedges. A butterfly lifts off a snap dragon to the left of the porch step and flutters...
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Bonnets, Buggies and Blaine: Part 4 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Old mare never had a name. Mommy found her when she was an emaciated foal who could no longer stand. My mother paid 50 dollars to save her, which was fifty times what the dying foal was worth in 1960....
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Attributes of a Magical Grandmother: Part 5 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Granma is probably my most favorite person in the universe. She dresses up at Halloween, throws banquets at Christmas and takes me bowling on Saturday mornings. My Granma is different from other...
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The One I Loved Best: Part 6 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
I remember the day my sister was born. Everyone says I can’t but I do. The day Sis was born began in Holy Cross hospital. I feel Granma take my hand as I wave goodbye to my daddy who is dressed in...
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California Sunshine: Part 7 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
When the snow piles up against the house or its grey and ugly outside; when the Salt Lake City inversions turn bright summer sunlight into a grey haze, it’s then that old memories turn gold bright and...
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The Sacred Act of Loving Art: Part 10 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
For as long as I can remember, Mommy has taken us to every art exhibition and museum in Salt Lake City. We tour galleries and studio openings, my mother describing brush strokes, paint layering,...
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Hefelton Farm: Part 11 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Mommy and Daddy are going. My sister cries a little, her tears turning to a forlorn silence. They are not going in a bad or permanent way but rather on a three day marriage retreat to “work” on how to...
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The Dancer, the Dead and the Madonna: Part 12 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Granma’s Madonna scares me. She says it will be ours one day, my sisters and mine; but I don’t want it. I want to want it but I can’t. In my heart I know it has to be my sisters because it can’t ever...
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The Nazis Next Door: Part 13 of Rain on Cloudless Day
Granma lives on 5th south in an old home that was once converted into a duplex. It has two kitchens and two living rooms, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. Daddy had to knock down a wall just so Granma...
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The Sanctuary of a Story: Part 15 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Everything is safe in a story. Stories have beginnings and middles and ends. If the storyteller is kind then the story ends well. Though not all stories end the way we want, a good story, a story...
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The Shame in Bare Shoulders: Part 16 of Rain on a Cloudless Day
Jenny, Eleanor and Zara (front row center) On my seventh birthday my friend Zara gave me a sun dress with red, white, and green pinstripes. It was the most beautiful dress I had ever owned. I loved it...
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When Henry Beeped
Henry BEEPED, the digital sound echoed through the pool deck so perfectly that the swimmer before him dove, a perfect arch of girl slicing through the water, streamlined, rising without breath into a...
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Star Catching by Moonlight
Beauty Miss Rose lived in a white clapboard house set in a rambling garden where Tabby-Ginger hunted each day. Roses grew in tumbling hedges along her borders, guarding the gate of her frail white...
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Tanya
We were six. You were a Navajo, and a black girl, my soul sister-more sister to me then my own flesh. I loved you. I love you. You were dark brown and your hair hung in glossy black ringlets. We read...
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The Caretakers
The Killien Mansion during the Lauzon family ownership, circa 1935. “The council agreed to send a letter of condolence to Mr. F. Killien, though no one knows what he was to be consoled for. Someone in...
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Eternal Spring
I believed then, that I would feel young until I was properly old. I knew without doubt that I would travel, climb mountains, ride horses from castle to castle and understand the intricacies of life....
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Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com It’s that hateful question every child is asked by some grinning old person who means well but has no real idea of the strain they are placing on a young mind. What do...
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