One time, I read a comment made by a famous writer about how she indulged in a ritual whenever she straightened up her closet, cleaned out her refrigerator, and the like: “I can’t leave one shoe alone in the corner or one carrot in the drawer by itself; I wouldn’t want to hurt its feelings.”…

It’s the first thing most people have said. She was so young. Amy Winehouse was so young. I’ve had only a handful of conversations about Winehouse since her death—over dinner with movie group, at the hair salon—but they’ve followed a pattern. A brief bit about the cause of death—how could it not have been drug-related?—and…

My early adolescence feels like a movie I haven’t seen in a long time. When I first watched it, I thought it was profound, tragic—a saga for our generation. Memory has clouded the plot and left me with moods and snapshots: oceans of feeling, crippling insecurity, the thrill of footsie in Algebra and the sting…

As of August 18th, my husband and I will have been married twenty-one years, and have known each other for a total of twenty-four. It’s easy to believe after all of that time that I know everything there is to know about him. There’s something wonderful about that, the comfort and ease and shorthand that…

It’s been more than six weeks since my mother died, and the heavy cream-colored note cards are still sitting, reproachfully, in their pink box. The list of flower bouquets, delivered meals, and donations to my son’s Montessori school in my mother’s name—numbered 1-35 (and that’s just my portion: there are five other siblings), is scrawled…

“I was a wanderer who feels the solace of his native land under his feet again and moving in his blood.” —Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage” After a several year late-twenties lull, my last four summers have been dominated not just with weddings, but with the major weddings of family and intimate friends. I…

As I type this, the band-aid on my back is sliding off, the Vaseline from the dermatology office a slick, clear ooze spread below my shoulder blades. I had to get a mole removed, and the daily care the resulting wound requires is both minimal and difficult: I’m having a hard time reaching my arms…

When I heard about the death of pop singer Amy Winehouse, age 27, I immediately had two reactions. The first was great sadness. You can see the train wreck coming, but that doesn’t make the resulting smashup any less tragic or senseless. It is always sobering to witness great talent and the waste of great…

Until about a month ago, I had never knowingly listened to a song by Lady Gaga. I don’t listen to Top 40 radio, and I haven’t watched MTV in at least a decade, but one evening, fast-forwarding through an episode of Saturday Night Live we had recorded on the DVR—the only way that Jess and…

I drink with train hoppers. I seek them out, hang with them. My wife is fine with it. She accepts my fascination with them, even if she doesn’t fully understand it. Here in Lynchburg, Virginia, in among the train hoppers is where I find the gang I’m looking for: a cluster of former Liberty University…