I remember my mom yelling at my dad through the phone, and wondering when I might get to meet him. I remember meeting him, the sound of his laugh, the slope of his shoulder, how he rubbed his feet together at the end of the day, how he took the list my mom had madeContinue reading “Knick-Knacks”
Category Archives: Memoir
Impaled Digits
Growing up, I had the privilege of enduring several ingrown toenail surgeries, which culminated in having a third of the nail removed on each of my big toes. Of course, by that time I was reading a magazine and whistling to myself while blood spurted across the room like a Monty Python skit. Yet IContinue reading “Impaled Digits”
Bittersweet: A Portrait of Professional Cooking
The kitchen end of the restaurant business is a fascinating industry to work in, if you’re fascinated with minds warped by the toll of long hours, intense stress, and hearing the same songs ooze out of grease-addled radio speakers. Then there are the bodies attached to those cerebral cortexes – bodies beaten into submission overContinue reading “Bittersweet: A Portrait of Professional Cooking”
Constance
Here’s a little something I wrote in honor of my high school English teacher, Constance Person. It was a big class in a big high school in the big city, and I was terrified of being called upon. I was a shy country mouse who was used to small classes in a small school inContinue reading “Constance”
A Child’s Christmas in Oregon
In our little country house in the sopping-wet Willamette valley winter, heat radiated from the woodstove as my mother rubbed a cast-iron pan back and forth upon it, one hand holding a lid down tight to make popcorn the old-fashioned way. I’d lay on the floor and play with the cat, listening to my mom’sContinue reading “A Child’s Christmas in Oregon”
C.M. Rivers 