In retrospect, I’m not sure when my mother passed the boundary between heavy drinker and out-and-out drunk. I couldn’t assess her drinking any more than a fish can judge the water it swims in.

The front door of the big shabby grey house was right below her bedroom and once,  when I was in high school, I woke her up, coming home very late at night.  I’d say it was after my curfew but I never had a curfew, no one cared how late I went out, how late I stayed out.  If I came home…

Even in the dead of winter, the cool, spicy scent of lilies fills the great hall.  I turn right and enter  a small room with walls of honey-colored stone, a room for a spirit to inhabit for all eternity.  Built 4,000 years ago and moved in its entirety to a city its builder could not have imagined. Here, there are no raised voices, no rage, no threats or accusations.  I have found comfort  in this place of ancient silence since I was a child.

Visits to my mother were never easy.  This…

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania sits on the banks of the Susquehanna, a wide, shallow river much given to overflowing its banks.  Shipoke, a charming neighborhood on the south side of town, floods with such regularly that it calls itself, with a certain wry pride, Venice on the Susquehanna.  Residents take it for granted.  Flood insurance is a given, people keep family pictures on their upper floors, along with antiques and pretty much anything else that isn’t easily replaced or would be damaged by…

“She had the wisdom not to try to reason people out of things they didn’t get reasoned into.”

 This piece of transcendental wisdom was buried in a book I read but don’t remember.  600 pages of unadulterated crap with a yellow cover and a single brilliant sentence.     

“He likes to cook.   With cooking, if you start with good ingredients and take reasonable care, you will end up with something good.  Like is not like this.  Work is not like this. Sometimes cooking saves his…