Category: Prose

I’ve been thinking a lot about mothers lately. Two months ago, I received an email from StoryCorps notifying me that an interview I had conducted with my mom 13 years ago was now accessible in their online archives and part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I was…

I’m cleaning up an exhaust valve with a bench grinder when my mechanic tells me this: There used to be this ol’ boy who worked for me. I had him cleaning the parts. One day he said to me, “Why do I have to be the one that gets greasy all the time?” I walked…

My phone rings. I answer it. It’s my mechanic. “You know how we were talking about working on your car on Friday?” he says. “Yeah,” I say. “Well, I forgot my son was getting married on Friday.” “That’s no problem. We can do it another time then.” “No, we can still work. I just need…

On the first day of class, Michael Armstrong instructed us to write about an object that we each had left back home and that we would miss during the six weeks we were in Vermont. I wrote about how I would miss my grandmother’s ’70 Volkswagen Bug, driving my kids to the pool with the…