I couldn’t record it in my Flava journal app because the transformation happened slowly, like any great change of being. The epiphany, if that’s what it was, only marked my awareness of what had been accomplished through the myriad invisible operations of life. There is mystery yet. I remember one day at church, a friend…

Thanksgiving Day after I turned four: high fever at dinner, a drive through a blizzard, then a spinal tap. Meningitis. The nurse promised me angels, and they floated from the bright examination light to the floor, and this is all I remember: paper angels filling the emergency room, snow falling outside, my mother crying. For…

By the time you read this, inshallah, we will have the new dishwasher purchased and installed in our kitchen. I’m not holding my breath. It’s been this long, so it is easy to envision a horizon of expectations that continues to recede into the distance a few more weeks or months. “Oh, come on,” my…

My six-year-old son caught me off guard. “I wish we had a backyard,” he said one afternoon. He had been playing more or less quietly with his Legos, and I was enjoying a book. “Oh, yeah?” I responded. “Why is that?” “Then we could just play outside and you wouldn’t have to watch us,” he…

Everyone knows what happened. Everyone lifts a steaming spoon of cinnamon oatmeal to their lips. Everyone crosses “t”s. Everyone knows there’s blood on the fence in Wyoming. Everyone hears God in Charleston. Everyone knows what happened. Everyone tries to beat the nightly news home, but everyone knows the news, licensed to drive, drives everyone mad.…

Continued from a previous post. Read part 1 here.  After my wife Katie and I decided to get matching tattoos, we spent months pinning designs and discussing placement, and—let’s be honest—fighting over pretty much every detail. It probably had been easier to choose our children’s names. We’re a stubborn and volatile couple, so there was…

My daughters Lydia and Becca, ages 12 and 10, are thoroughly delighted by the contemporary art collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum. They hurry to the Warhol soup cans and Lichtenstein comics they recognize from art class, a large sculpture made entirely of clear plastic buttons, and plenty of outrageously “simple” pieces they insist they…

When I moved into this apartment with my wife after gaining Canadian immigration clearance, I noticed, standing on our balcony, two apartments in the public housing building across from us. The first apartment, near the center of the building and four stories below us, was always visible at a sharp angle from above, and inside…

I am boarding a plane to Detroit, and so is she, her thick coat falling onto my lap from the center aisle, the smell of smoke thick enough to make my head swim. She shoves the coat under her seat, her thick gray hair brushing my arm as she sits. “I’m Dianne,” she tells me,…

  Tonight, I’m paying attention to one of my “essentials.” You probably have a movie like this one—a movie that repairs you, that restores your spirits, that put everything into perspective. (If you do, leave a comment so we can all check it out.) But let me tell you what I’m watching. I see a…