MEANINGMAKER

meaning

  • they were always golden

    I got to hold the babies and pet all the dogs. I got to fold warm laundry. Blow out birthday candles. Take naps. I got to walk down ordinary streets and notice beautiful things. Flower gardens. A child drawing galaxies… Continue reading

  • dear sugar

    Some of you know Cheryl Strayed as the writer behind Wild, but before that she wrote an anonymous advice column called Dear Sugar — a place where people brought their hardest, most tangled truths, and Sugar met them with a… Continue reading

  • the next big thing

    Yesterday I had lunch with a woman who, last year, walked away from a 25‑year corporate career – just a few years shy of the golden pension so many of us hang on for. She realized she didn’t have any… Continue reading

  • a mirror in the desert

    By some strange twist of fate, my kids started their lives perched in Justin Bieber’s old high chair whenever they stayed at my parents’ house for the weekend. It was a classic ’70s vinyl number – sturdy, a little scuffed,… Continue reading

  • all the days we did not live

    I decided to walk to work this morning. Unusual for me in the winter. On my way, I happened to see an unhoused woman curled up on the cold sidewalk on the other side of the street, surrounded by the… Continue reading

  • heaven is a campfire

    I like to thinkthat before any of us had bodieswe sat around a campfirein heaven,leaning into its warmthletting the light touch our faces,our knees tucked up to our chests.The flames crackledlike tiny miracles,sending up sparksas if the stars were being… Continue reading

  • definition

    Woke /wohk/(adjective.) The moment a person stands uprightin the full measure of their seeing.As in what Pope Leo said:To be called woke in a world that sleepsthrough sufferingis no insult. Or,the strange conditionin which noticing the worldis treated as more… Continue reading

  • a mirror in minneapolis

    Two liveswhose names readlike promisesthe world failed to keep:Good. Pretti. What a bitter sermontheir deaths preach:That goodness is no armour,that beauty is not spared,that loving your peoplewill cost your life.A dark gospelspelled out in their bloodon the streets of Minneapolis.… Continue reading

  • lift what you can

    My mother taught me to shovel snowthe way I imaginesome mothers teach prayer –patient, shoulder to shoulder. She’d come home from a long day,and say: Come on, let’s go.Out into the dark we went,into the hush of the world,the night itself… Continue reading

  • new year’s eve 1975

    She slipped the deep blue coat from the hanger.The fur collar brushed her cheek,a brief vanishing softness. I watched from my doorway,a child awake when I shouldn’t have been,drawn by the thin slice of light— a path to my mother.… Continue reading