Family Category
My Father’s Hands (nonfiction)
Posted on November 9, 2020 13 Comments
In my memory, my father’s hands are large. His sturdy fingers, the columns that hold up the Parthenon roof, the pillars that secure the world on the turtle’s back, that hold me as I swing between him and my mother when we walk down the street together. His palms span wide enough to encompass mine, […]
Climbing trees
Posted on August 12, 2020 8 Comments
Mulberry trees stand in two corners of my mother’s garden. In summer, the garden becomes a minefield littered with incendiary devices waiting for a mistimed step, a careless footfall. Splatters of pink-purple cover the driveway, the outlines of shoes and bare feet silhouetted on the concrete. Though resplendent with their purple jewels every year, their […]
Roots
Posted on April 6, 2020 5 Comments
A golden thread runs between my mother’s garden and mine. Earth beneath fingernails carries legacy and heritage.
The conversion of cat people
Posted on February 6, 2020 6 Comments
There hadn’t been a dog in our family in my living memory. When I was a baby, there was Johnny – a pure bred bitser[1], a beast of the most patchwork genealogy possible, a hotchpotch of canine genetics that tested the limits of hybrid vigour. But he was a myth, a legend, a story drawn from […]
How to make an espresso
Posted on December 19, 2019 2 Comments
How to make an espresso: Not really about making coffee.
Quit
Posted on November 6, 2019 7 Comments
YeahWrite #447 Microprose: an object you are (or your main character is) happier without in 47 words
An inconclusive list of things I’ve learned from having a puppy in the house (again)
Posted on September 12, 2019 8 Comments
Tiles are a godsend. Carpet accidents happen. Despite your best efforts. Money spent on a good carpet cleaner is never a waste. Reading instructions and learning the proper use of your carpet cleaner is time well spent. Puppies (like teens) eat a lot. They will eat pretty much any everything. Puppies have two speeds; full […]
My friend, Bear
Posted on September 5, 2019 1 Comment
When a dog died in an early reader children’s book, we were not okay.
How not to make my father’s sardine achar
Posted on August 6, 2019 2 Comments
How not to make my father’s sardine achar — on forgetting and remembering a death anniversary
Silky Sidney
Posted on March 7, 2019 2 Comments
She pinched off a piece of the tiny banana between the tips of her fingers and thumb. Sun-ripened and sugary-sweet, it was harvested earlier that morning from one of the many banana plants in her sprawling, verdant, over-planted garden. She mashed it meticulously, breaking up large chunks so there would be no choking hazard. Then […]
Asha Rajan 