Radio Diaries

In my family, dinner ended with the children being excused to go play while the parents and grandparents stayed at the table to drink coffee and talk. At…

In my mid-twenties, I moved to Chicago to live with some college friends. Our apartment was on Dearborn Street, an interesting old neighborhood a few…

A big silver maple lives a couple blocks from me, taller than any house on the street. Staring up, I notice how crooked the tree is, how unbalanced where…

I get up earlier than usual on a school morning and my father is already shaving in the bathroom. “Well, well,” he says, “Looks like my date is…

I grew up with a father who had some kind of proverb or platitude for every occasion. One of his favorites was, “Anticipation is always greater than…

I stood in the doorway of Art’s office, asking for help. Art Maha was my boss—a corporate sales star who’d been promoted to advertising manager for the…

It’s early winter and spiders are making nests in the corners of my ceilings. They hide themselves so well, they’re hard to spot—but when I do, I’m not…

I pull out a file folder called “Recipes” and paw through the wrinkled, stained papers to find Sharon’s “White Bean & Barley Soup.” She has translated the…

Rain changing to snow in the forecast. Two doors down, a young man hauls a roll of carpet out of the house. Virginia’s house, I think, but not anymore.…

We climbed steadily for four days and set up camp at 10,000 feet to rest before our descent. Deep valleys fell away into shadow while the white peaks of…