鈥淭hey鈥檙e just trees; no more pictures!鈥� whines a boy, maybe six years old, to his parents. He is much more invested in the line of ice cream trucks a few meters away than posing with the sakura.
As my mom reads off every name, my sister and I try our hardest to commit them to memory. We are six and eight years old, excitedly staring at the family tree in front of us. It is astonishing and extensive, with some very familiar names and others that I have only heard of as characters from my parents鈥� ...
Upon returning home from a family reunion trip two summers ago, I was welcomed back by the presence of two very conspicuous solid lines on the white plastic Covid-19 test in my hand. I had not (to my knowledge) had Covid since the pandemic had started. It was bound to happen at some point, I thought ...
As if by reflex, I grab the keys off the kitchen counter and toss them to my sister. A frequent inhabitant of the passenger seat, I am more than happy to relinquish control of the car. We head into the sticky garage, and the familiar humidity of a Rhode Island summer greets us. Our routine begins.
Tears well up in my eyes the instant the plate hits the ground. It shatters on the kitchen floor beneath me, its pearly ceramic fragments blending in almost seamlessly with the tile. I鈥檓 six years old, and my dinner plate has slipped out of my small hands en route to the dishwasher. My dad picks me ...
My desk is overwhelmed by tidy stacks of newspapers. Every crossword puzzle is solved, while every article is unread. An optimist beyond reason, it鈥檚 natural for me to abstain from the news. I鈥檒l thumb through it every now and again, only to graze upon more of the same: new government policy perturbing ...
