writing

The pearly everlasting

We meet mom’s friend Helga for dinner at the Croatian guy Tony’s new restaurant and sit inside at the best table (“without shadows,” Tony says). It’s called Adriatic cuisine, which I take to mean Mediterranean, though my geography and culinary… Read More ›

From the morning

Mom and I drove to a nearby village to a men’s clothing store looking for traditional-style German sweaters, the kind they wear with lederhosen. Instead I found a pair of knickers that tie below the knees, a style you don’t… Read More ›

Kodachrome

Mom still had the non-alcoholic beers I’d left two years ago and surprisingly, they tasted the same. We went to the mall to buy her a pop socket for her phone and I helped clean up her file storage, then… Read More ›

Ghost story

This is a series of posts written from my mom’s house in Germany. Many of the restaurants and people I know are gone late August but some are starting to trickle back before I leave, in early September. So the… Read More ›

Frets and fingers

Somewhere mom got this new painting, possibly from the old barn they just cleaned out, of a medieval-looking village by a tall stone wall beside a flowing river. It isn’t her village but could be, as there must be hundreds… Read More ›

Found art

Each day was cut from its own pattern and this day was Sunday. Here in mom’s small town in Germany most of the shops were closed. Only gas stations and bakeries were open, bakeries just in the morning. And that… Read More ›

Goin’ back

Whether it was the summer rain patting the pavement or the lentils burbling in the slow cooker I cannot say, but the sound was such a comfort it put me in a trance. I flittered between reading and napping as… Read More ›