more about: blogger contest

A Dusty Road to Friendship Squeezed together on the bench seat of an old van, Speciose and I couldn’t help knocking into each other as we bounced over potholes, swerved around pedestrians crowding the red clay roads of Kigali, Rwanda.   She speaks Kinyarwanda to someone on her cell phone, clothed in vibrant African dress, hair braided like a piece […]

Belly Button Rings and Hugh Grant When Olivia made the Honor Roll, Donna promised they’d pierce their belly buttons.  The report card arrived. The news wasn’t good…C+ in History.  Thumbs flying, Olivia texted Donna.  “She says I worked hard.  We’re still going!”  Always one to pick my battles with this teen daughter, I agreed. Hours later, Donna pulled her pickup […]

The summer I went on Prozac, Amy was the only thing that kept me from weeping uncontrollably at what was easily the most depressing job to ever decorate my resume.  We graded proficiency essays at a long, gray table in an office park for nine dollars an hour.  I was home from college that summer to see my long distance […]

Cooking Up an Unusual Friendship I come by my love of food–cooking and eating it–honestly. When my family dines together, we don’t discuss politics; we talk about what we are going to prepare for the next meal. So, when my niece was getting married, I did what I love to do–prepared an Italian meal for a gathering of friends and […]

Two days before she died at the age of a hundred-and-one, my friend Hope Davis lost her false teeth in a bowl of popcorn next to her hospital bed. I was the one who found them, and we laughed until our bellies hurt. When we met in a memoir writing class, Hope was an outspoken 95-year old ex-communist who had […]