Over breakfast on Father’s Day morning, Arlo told me, “I’m sorry.” When I ask her why, she said I was probably missing my dad. My father, Chilton, has been gone for more than 12 years. I still miss him but my chest doesn't ache quite like it used to. I miss him most when I read …
39
In the spring of 1995, as I approached my 30th birthday, I told Greg that I wanted to spend the month of September riding my bike around Ireland alone. Greg expressed support for the idea and encouraged me to start training. To prepare for the trip: I took a bike repair class at Wright Brothers …
38
My grandmother Christine lived in a rambler house in Lacey, Washington, down the way from an elementary school that had a covered basketball court. When we visited as kids, we’d walk down her street, which was lined with other low-slung houses built in the 1960s, to the school to play basketball and run around. Sometimes …
37
My love affair with my grandmother, Mildred, was really pretty brief. We reconnected the summer of 1983 when I took the train to see her in Arizona before I started college and I visited her three or four other times before she died six years later in July of 1989. Whenever I visited with Mildred, …
36
In the spring of 1987, I was a 21-year old college dropout working in the mailroom of a downtown Seattle law firm alongside all the other college dropouts. Our responsibilities included sorting the mail (interoffice and US mail) and delivering it to each attorney’s office three times a day by pushing little metal carts fitted …
35
My maternal grandmother, Christine Sears, gave birth to a baby boy on February 8, 1938. That boy, my uncle Jerry, was born with Down Syndrome. In my opinion, the single greatest thing my grandmother ever did was to keep him. Rather than giving her baby to the state or placing him in an institution, Christine …
34
I lived in the run down old mansion on Capitol Hill on two occasions: the first time for a period of about seven months from June – December of 1988 and again from March of 1990 until June of 1993. In between I spent six months living in Washington DC during which I applied to …
33
My grandparents, Mildred and Roger, kept everything. When Roger died in 2000, I inherited all of the family photographs and Mildred’s cedar chest along with all of the ephemera it held. Consequently, I have the holiday cards my father, Chilton, and his brother, David, sent to their mother; letters that Mildred received from her brothers …
32
I never had the pleasure of riding in an airplane with my father or of going on a trip with him that didn't involve hitchhiking. In the mid to late 1980s, when Chilton’s parents, Mildred and Roger, were both still alive, Chilton made annual trips to visit them in Arizona. Because he had more time …
31
In February of 1994, Greg and I returned to the States after our time living and teaching in northern Namibia. We flew to the east coast and then spent a couple of weeks visiting Greg’s folks in Buffalo. While we were there, I studied for and then took the GRE because I was entertaining the …
The winnowing project 