As I sift through the hundreds of photos from our most recent trip, I can’t help but remember how often I mentally constructed a shot only to realize a white van sat inside the frame. Occasionally it’s grey, or less often, black, but a van is a van when it’s taking up space in front…
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The bus stop was around the corner, across a street, then down half the length of Broadview, a street that ran parallel to our street. It was the back street–the one that bordered the field with the storm drain. The field that we heard someday would become a freeway. I felt like I was in…
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One of the many new aspects of our life at the house on Elkelton was a color television. The Curtis Mathes set was Colonial in style and made of maple. It was a big box of a thing that sat on four decorative legs about six inches off the floor. To me, it resembled a…
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Whether I’ve wanted to or not, I’ve hung on to certain numbers of significance in my life. They roll off my tongue when I’m playing the memory one-upmanship game with someone: 4023, the phone number assigned to our family on the Navy base in Rota, Spain; 1056, the address of the house on Navarra Lane;…
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August is two weeks away, but the dog days have already arrived. It was early June when I noticed them edging into my morning rituals: I forget to step outside for that first, fresh breath of damp air; organizing the kitchen and my thoughts for the day while waiting for my coffee is hit and…
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If our original plans had gone as expected, we would be on a direct flight home instead of waiting for a taxi outside of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England. Our “vacation” had been extended a week to ensure that I was fit enough to be on an eleven hour flight. I remember the strong…
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