the latest posts tagged ‘simone’
in the dying light
The finches are back. A flitting, chattering flock of tiny green birds appears in the elm outside my office windows at the ragged edge of every summer and stays as long as the camouflage works. As the ground cools and the leaves fade from Pippin Apple Green to Dirty Yellow Ready-To-Drop, there are…
dogleg to malibu, north by northwest
It’s time to fly away. I don’t know how things lined up so perfectly – Mr. Forte’s office retreat in Santa Barbara and Simone’s school Grandparents’ Day in San Francisco bookending a blank Monday and Tuesday that made it ridiculous to even think about driving back to San Diego in the middle – but…
cops and robbers
I was on the phone with my daughter Amy last September, early in my granddaughter’s second-grade school year. She said, “Simone came home from school and told me they did the lockdown drill today.” I remembered her first year there, kindergarten, in the big old building that sits squarely in the middle…
a rock and roll band’s child of god
There was an eclectic soup of people at my stepmother’s memorial fête last November in Carmel: the last of her old Friends For Life, a handful of family, dozens of sad pals who had loved her for decades, a couple oblivious hangers-on, a few furtive cranks gossiping in the back over the cheese about…
simone’s astonishing feat of strength
A few summers ago when Simone was two, she discovered if she just tapped Uncle John’s hands with her little palms, he would be launched backward into the pool as though shot from a large cannon. In no time at all, she became drunk with power.
still tilting at windmills
When my stepmother Margery died last year, we rescued Don Quixote from the scrap heap in Carmel and brought him to San Diego where he greets visitors at Casa de Swell. He’s a little unsteady from his years scaring deer outside MMM’s house, rust having disconnected his legs from his feet. His…