Closet Confession

Closet Confession

I confess. I love shoes. They were the last thing I bought before the pandemic hit. But they were bought in secret. With a credit card. An expensive pair of sandals I had been eyeing for a while. While on vacation in a city with my favorite store, I caved in. It was the last pair…

Guilt Laid Bare

Guilt Laid Bare

As a physician-in-training in the late 1970s, I rotated among a variety of inner-city public hospitals, honing clinical skills with patients who were grateful to have someone, anyone, care enough to take care of them. There were plenty of street people who needed to be deloused before the “real” doctors would touch them, and there…

The Friendship of Grief

The Friendship of Grief

I woke to the song of mourning doves. Their soundtrack seems a part of the landscape here in the Texas Hill Country, along with the buzz of locusts on hot summer afternoons and the chirp of tree frogs in the scrub that separates our home from a fairway often inhabited by golfers with a penchant…