The difficulties of eating well on a budget in America are legion. I remember going to a grocery store a few years ago to buy a couple of good-sized red delicious apples, only to find that each of them cost over a dollar apiece. Working with college students like I do, I’m always mindful of the “ramen lifestyle” many of them fall into, and ever since theafternoon I bought those apples, I’ve always found myself making ramen-based calculations whenever I shop for produce, trying to…
Eight days from today will mark the first anniversary of my departure from Toledo. Very early that morning, before the sun was even close to rising, a friend drove me from her house, where I’d been staying for a few months, to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. It wasn’t the first time I’d been to that airport — I’d gone there before with family members who were flying, and even to help pick up a traditional Japanese music ensemble that was hired to perform in the greater…
I made sure that Mom was one of the first people to own an Amazon Echo when they first came out a few years ago. Her vision had been steadily deteriorating for a long time, and I knew that the convenience of her being able to play music by simple voice commands would be more than worth the purchase price by itself. Being able to ask for things like weather forecasts and other basic information was a bonus, and the bits of personality that Amazon…
Two years ago today, when Mom passed away, the world didn’t end. It just felt like it did to me. About eight and a half years earlier, on the day that my father died, I drove Mom home from the hospital. Neither of us cried after we got the news, probably because we knew that we had to be strong for each other at that moment. Mom broke later that afternoon when a Girl Scout, bringing the cookies that my father had ordered for us,…
For over half my life now, I’ve struggled with Seasonal Affective Disorder in early autumn. I don’t know if it was a series of painful life situations I had to deal with one particular summer when I was younger, or just my growing awareness of the metaphorical meaning of the seasons changing (and all the attendant cues around me), but even when I’ve had good things going on for me at the time, September has been a very painful month for me to get through.…