Who I really am was photographed long ago.

This weekend while discussing her retirement home move, I told my mother that all I truly wanted was a single photograph taken at a family reunion when I was perhaps only four. I am standing in front of my grandfather with his brothers lined up on both sides of us.

What I found many years later when replacing faulty plumbing work

Her husband had done some bathroom plumbing work years after The Baby had drowned in their little fish pond. Lois had not wanted to throw away the newspaper articles. She could not let go. He used them to wrap my pipes. He could honestly say, “I never threw them away.”

What had I missed?

The light was briefly different that late afternoon, both inside and outside. It was as if something important had just happened or was about to happen, and all of nature was paused until someone noticed. Then the ordinariness of the day returned, and everything was as it had been before.