MEANINGMAKER

truth

  • about mothers

    This is the thing about mothers…. Even as a small child some of us will understand that our mothers have secrets. Longings and hidden sadnesses. Silent sorrows and quiet pains. Some of those things will only ever be told to… Continue reading

  • a brilliant wreckage

    I left a brilliant wreckage. A white-hot, smoking tangle of family and love and hopes and forevers, the shatter of which was so great — at least in my mind — that after the words were out, there was no… Continue reading

  • the weight of the world is love

    It’s lunchtime and I closed my office door. I feel sad today. Nothing happened to me. I’m blessed in an embarrassment of ways. And yet, some days just seem to sit on top of me like a stone. The world… Continue reading

  • i’m still here

    She kneels down next to me and presses her palm to the side of my face.The softness of her.Her hands always so warm.She leans close.We stay that way for a minute or two.I’m still here, she says.All you have to… Continue reading

  • lessons from a gravedigger

    I stood at the upstairs bedroom window for a few minutes this morning, watching as a man chipped away at the cold, hard ground, squaring up the sides of a new grave in the cemetery that butts up against our… Continue reading

  • house of cards

    It was a house of cards. Everyone was busy playing their hand. We took our own deck, a bottle of wine and a corner table. At the end of that night, the bottle was empty. Everyone was gone. And there… Continue reading

  • love, in the end

    He kissed me the first time one night in front of the Francis Furniture store. The moon was high and, for the fifth or sixth night in a row, he ignored his aunt’s curfew and her pleas not to hang… Continue reading

  • the telling

    For some reason — I don’t remember why — same-sex marriage had been in the news around June of 2012. That Sunday night, as I grappled with what my own coming out story would be, we talked about it at… Continue reading

  • pride thoughts 2021

    Every year in June, I think about Edie Windsor and Thea Speyer. Though they’re both gone now, in the not too distant past, Edie (in her 80s) fought a long battle to have her marriage to Thea legally recognized. She… Continue reading

  • on being 50

    I’m turning 50 later this week. People who know this seem to be approaching me cautiously wondering how I’m “taking it.” I’m taking it like the par-tay that it is. Like, I’m not getting senior discounts yet, but I know… Continue reading