Tag: poverty

Grief is a Sneaky Bitch and Other Holiday Thoughts

When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush…
Captain’s Log: Baby’s First Flight

Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by…
David Sedaris: Call and Response

January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal…
Emmanuel: God With Us

I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then…
Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Wieners and Buns

Let me preface the beginning of this series with a few things: I’m gonna take weekends off for my “writing every day” goal in November. I can do this because I’m a grown ass woman and I want to. I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have AMAZING parents who did the best with what…
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for…
On Medicaid

Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he…
The Good Doctor

The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid…
On Being a Size 16

(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden…
Let’s Trash It: Forced Modesty

(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by…
Welfare Queens and Other Lies My Hard Heart Believed

I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store…
Why Christian?

I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp,…
Fix It, Jesus

“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead,…
On Being LGBT+ Affirming

I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and…
New Wineskins

I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but…
Getting Published: The Pitch Session

One aspiring author’s first encounter with a pitch session
The Backpack

Should I keep this? Marie Kondo whispered, “Tidy up!” in my ear as I studied the small, missile-shaped backpack. There were a few tears along the bottom, a grommet was missing. A long-forgotten zip-tie still prevented worn zipper from falling open and allowing the heavy oxygen tank inside to tumble out and put a…
Bridge-Building Magic

For the last nine years, I taught English as a Second Language at a tiny adult education program housed in rotting, aged portables behind a local school. Since 2017, every year I have welcomed a new group of nervous Level 2 students. Most of my students were Spanish-speaking stay-at-home moms but I always had a…
Oh, The Humanity

sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed,…
Forty

“Teacher, what is this?” One of my English as a Second Language students was pointing to a phrase on a worksheet I’d just handed out. Answering machine. I thought for a moment, deciding to try and explain it using words she might already know in English, with hand gestures to help me along. “When I…
Oregon, Someday

The first time we went to Oregon, spring clouds hung over the emerald forests blanketing the foothills of snow-capped Mount Hood. It rained most of the time that we were there but we’d come prepared. Our rain jackets and big dumb hats protected us from the rain that managed to make it through the thick…
On Showing Up

As a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis, Alex did a 150 mile bike ride at the beginning of May. The race is split over two days–80 miles the first day, 70 the second. After fighting through a broken gear box and finishing the first 70 miles using only two gears, he came home late on Saturday,…
The Punch

Alex and I started out our married life in a full-size bed. As newlyweds, we’d wake up shoulder-to-shoulder and end our day spooning each other to sleep. It was cute but it didn’t last long. We upgraded to a queen as soon as we had two nickels to rub together, which was better, but we…
The World Needs a Little More Dungeons and Dragons

A slice of morning sun falls across my face through a slit in the wooden shutters of the tiny room I’m renting at the third best inn in Kirton, making me groan as I stretch awake. I splash my face with the frigid water in the washbasin, sputtering while I stand before the small dresser…
Better, Lighter, Stronger: A Tale of Hope

My eyes were as big as the moon when the orderly wheeled in the new Bipap machine for the Baby. The machine looked like someone had told a child, ‘Draw a Transformer with no arms and octopus feet with wheels and a heavy boxy head with a screen face’ and then brought it to life.…