Tizi almost got run over–by a bike. Because watch out, they’re everywhere. On mercato day, when the streets are closed to auto traffic and the vendors’ stalls and tables are heaped with merch, we saunter, dawdle, and sidle along, looking at stuff. This day we had stopped in mid-stream, pedestrian traffic flowing past us on…More
Tag Archives: youth
Kissing Age–from American English, Italian Chocolate
Last night, halfway through Jeopardy, I asked my wife if she wanted to suck face. She shook her head in disgust. It’s not our usual nomenclature. “How about a smooch?” “No.” “A peck?” “No.” “A buss?” “Why do you talk that way?” She pointed at the TV. Alex Trebec was introducing Arthur Chu for the…More
Beans and Baroque
This morning I have a pot of bean soup on the stove. These are pinto beans. We buy them still in their pods at a local grocery store. Tizi is obsessed with them. Whenever we find a basket full of pinto beans, she buys all of them, carrying out a whole shopping bag stuffed with…More
The Birds and the Beatles
I’m reading a New Yorker article about Paul McCartney at the breakfast table one morning. At the top of the page there’s a black and white photo of the Beatles, circa 1965. It’s the year, the caption tells us, of Help! and Rubber Soul. My wife and I are leaving for Italy in a week…More
iSmell–coming soon to a nose near you
When I was a kid, I loved to watch my father shave, the brush, the whip-cream soap, the razor, and most of all, Old Spice. The bottle alone, with its ocean blue galleon and red curlicue font and its peg-leg cap, was exotic. Some nights, once he was done shaving, he would pat my cheeks…More
Then March On
A couple days ago I was surprised by a John Phillip Sousa march. It was a drippy Sunday morning around 7:00 a.m. I was driving to the local Kroger to buy a half gallon of milk. When I switched on the radio in the car, there it was, this irresistibly jaunty piece of music. I…More
Arrival–as in BABY
The woman in the next bed kept calling to her husband, “Fred! Oh, Fred!” And Fred said, “Okay, honey. Try to breathe now. Short breaths. Like this. Remember?” He pursed his lips and demonstrated. “Ohmygod, Fred!” “Breathe, honey.” I looked at my wife, she looked at me. She and Fred’s wife were in the on-deck…More
Gone and Back–car crash, near death, near birth
On a weekday morning in October of 1971 I got creamed at the corner of Buck and Lawndale Roads. The car I was driving, a VW Bug, collided with a van as I drove through the intersection. On three out of four corners, all flat farmland, field corn had reached its maximum height. I would…More
That Thing You’re No Good At–I suck at art
I learned at a young age that I suck at art. From a work in progress…More
Learning to Like It–first sips are always the hardest
Watch and listen to a short excerpt from “Learning to Like It,” an essay in Get Thee to a Bakery.More