More Than Brother So-and-so and Sister What-not

Barry and his sister, Michelle, at ages 5 and 8 respectively (6 years before the story below).   I am 10 or 11 years old, the only one at home when I hear my teenage sister come through the front door. I am immediately inspired to hide in the clothes hamper. She...

The Roots of Our Faith

A teenager, I notice our midwinter pecan tree’s bare-branched ostensions to the sky. For the first time, I see that its limbs and fingers look like an inverted root structure—as if the whole were extracted then replanted upside-down by a mischievous Olympian (perhaps...

Space, Picasso, and Frosted Flakes

Fifteen minutes before midnight my eyes open without a prompt, but bleary. I don what I laid out before my nap, hoping the layers will be enough for a clear night dipping into the 40s. Within 10 minutes my truck is carrying me, my preloaded telescope and camera...

The Center

Dense vegetation lining the creek bed across the street from my home houses ants, rats, opossums, squirrels, raccoons, hawks, owls, bees, and an uncatalogued menagerie of other species, all sallying into the neighborhood occasionally, just as the undergrowth itself...

Plaze Glain Donuts, Please

When I lived in Waco—newly married, fledging a church, attending college—there were not uncommon occasions for purchasing a few donuts from HEB, the grocery store. In that day still a consumer of donuts, I preferred sourdough. However, most of the kids our car...