Five year old footsteps pounding down the hall from the living room... ...MAHHHHHHHMMMMMYYYY! MICHAEL'S NOT DOING NICENESS COUNTS!!!!! MOMMMMMMEEEEEEE!!! I don't know what he did, but she turned his ass in, assuming there might be such thing as a Niceness... Read more →

There is no doubt the boy got the short end of the stick every single time. They lived in a little stone cottage on a small farm. The farm had horses and dogs and cats and bunnies. There was a... Read more →

The bear's name is Parquet and if you've ever read The Velveteen Rabbit, be assured that Parquet has been real for a very long time. An odd eleven year old asked for a teddy-bear at Christmas and the bear appeared... Read more →

Writer's prompts are magical. There is a section in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which the protagonist is remembering a moment with a college student struggling to write well. I won't get into the philosophical discussion of... Read more →

We migrated south from New England, down to the Badlands of Fairfield County. Technically still New England by virtue of the nearly invisible line separating it from Westchester County, New England it was not. I'd never stayed in any one... Read more →

He doesn't look like anybody but himself. He might have his father's ears and his grandmother's eyes, but that pixie face belongs entirely to his youngest sister. He's got his mother's nose and also her heart. You can break that... Read more →

My Aunt Annie. Not so sure about this selfie business. Heather, I don't know how to do this. Yes you do. You're doing it right now. She was seventeen when I was born, and married at twenty; three and a... Read more →

A word, please, Mr. Fischman! At the tail end of September, the summer occupants are elsewhere. Gone are the bunnies that hopped across my yard like they owned the place. Gone are the brown squirrels in the Shagbark tree, and... Read more →