Essays

June 17, 2010 My father is buried there, in the lovely and quiet hilltop cemetery at the end of the road, the Hedgecoth family cemetery with its guarding meadow of Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod. He has patiently lain for decades on his side of the big bed of which the gravestone is headboard. Overhead, fox and vole, wasp and cricket, perform the rote gestures and fatal spats for which nature programs them. Us. Moles bump their heads on his pillow. Roots embrace him, trying to reach his nutrients. I will be nutritious, too, some day.

June 11, 2010 It’s been nearly three years since I heard the eulogy, the hymns, and the loving testimony my father gave at my grandmother’s funeral. The first female Baptist minister in Dallas, her love knew no boundaries or obstacles. She simply followed God’s calling—registering the homeless to vote, working tirelessly to defeat George Bush—and she upset a lot of people at the time. Eventually she had to join the Methodist faith in order to preach from the pulpit. And while her sermons were always moving, it was the way she lived her life and loved indiscriminately that changed so many lives, including my own. It’s because of my grandmother that I have decided, at age 23, to undergo a preventative double mastectomy with reconstruction.

May 24, 2010 My daughter was born, grew, sat up, ate mush, and all the while I was happy with the books I’d carefully selected for her. Thalia, however, seemed not so terribly interested. I began to wonder if, horror of horrors, my squirmy kid was not going to like reading. But she grew some more, and I watched her reading enthusiasm grow, too. Only it was growing for books I didn’t choose—books I considered problematic.