Essays

The top drawer of the dresser was half pulled open as I sat silently on the bedroom floor, staring at an old sepia-toned photograph.

There was a time when a knock at the door meant more than a visitor. It meant another story was about to unfold.

The sound of a lawnmower pulled me from a deep sleep. I tumbled out of bed in my Star Wars pajamas, Darth Vader plastered across my chest. A pair of curtains hung like guardians over my bed, keeping the boogeyman at bay.

“That son of a bitch threw the game! He was winning all night, and then he just let the ball drop. Goddamn it! I knew it was rigged. That would’ve paid $2,100.”

As I sit here at my desk, window open, listening to the crickets chirp after a late-afternoon downpour, dusk begins to settle over a lazy Sunday. In a moment, I hear the gravel of Cedar Street beneath my feet as I begin walking the old neighborhood again.

“Why aren’t you ready?” Mama asked as I walked into the kitchen.

I was dressed in my favorite green-and-white silky Umbro soccer shorts, Adidas tennis shoes, and my favorite Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt.

“I am ready, Mama.”

Saturday, September 12, 2026

After a lovely morning at the Santuario de la Virgen del Rocio and the ruins of Ingapirca, we stopped for an extraordinary lunch at a nearby hacienda, Posada Ingapirca. The restored two-hundred-year-old property was something out of a storybook, with white adobe walls and uneven wooden floors.

There was a crispness in the air that evening in late October. As we stepped off the back porch, Mama wondered aloud, “You think we need to carry a sweater with us?” It was the first change in the weather that we’d felt in a long time.