By Brian R Sorrell
* * * REDEMPTION When I was four years old I knew my phone number. Still remember it to this day. But I don’t remember much of my dad. I don’t remember him saying goodbye, but I wish I could. At least then I’d know for sure he did. I remember fear, falling into a… Read more
I called my mom on Easter Sunday, trying to bridge the distance between us and capture a feeling that I live nearby. But I don’t. Those days are past. I’m nine thousand miles away, though I might as well be on the moon, as she sees it. We communicate through outer space anyway. To be honest,… Read more
In the replica of the John Bain Toy Shop at the Canterbury Museum there is a doll house, known as the Historic Dunedin House, which on 22 February 2011 suffered damage in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Little replica people still look on in dismay at their knocked over china and chairs, frozen in time. One… Read more
I can’t say how my life would have turned out had it been cloudy the day my fourth grade class visited the Peabody Museum in New Haven Connecticut. I certainly wouldn’t be standing here looking out my kitchen window at a honey locust tree, a trampoline, and a little boy, a world away from where… Read more
I am standing here, stunned, in heavy shifting winds strong as the waves turning rock to sand. I am at one end of one very small country a very long way from any other, and impossibly far from the first place I called home. This is Cape Reinga, the northernmost tip of New Zealand, where the… Read more
They tell me it used to be a bowling green, but now it’s sealed with asphalt and the kids come up here after dark and drink and smoke and grow up too fast. Half the perimeter is a concrete bench and I’m sitting here watching my little boy race around on his Christmas bike, his… Read more
The old man said to me “you’ve got to be careful” and he gestured with a slash to his throat and up his cheek. Might be he was reliving his navy days, 1963 Devonport, before houses hit seven figure prices and while it was still a rough and tumble fighting town of sailors, drunks, and… Read more
This morning Charlie woke up and found the breakfast I had left for him and the toy cars and blocks I had lined up last night after he went to bed and I knew he would stay occupied for a while so I drifted back to sleep because it was a crisp late spring morning and… Read more
Yesterday the clouds were a line of bunnies running with a birthday cake. Lately, Noodle exercises his eyes, notices distances, and writes fables into the sky. He’s becoming a dreamer. And he’s taken to creating characters and conversations in the creatures and the places we visit. One sunny winter day, we took him to Ambury… Read more
On the car ride back from his cousins’ house, well past bedtime, his face glowing in the pale low-pressure sodium lights outside the turnpike toll plaza, Noodle asked whether we would still love him if he lost a hand. I checked the rearview to see if he was giggling out a cheeky ruse, but he… Read more
One of my earliest memories is of my father storming into the downstairs playroom with a stack of records that I loved listening to and snapping them into shards while I cried. As I recall, one of his records had been scratched. I’m not sure if the scratch had been my fault, but that was… Read more
Seems that everybody wants to be at the mercy of something. Whether rules, or limits, or comfort in standards and certainty, I never feel quite right in the company of constraint. Of course I realize that you’ve got to know the rules before you break them — get them in your bones then let them go snap.… Read more
Like any three year old, Noodle has a tough time settling down at night. In an ongoing effort to make us feel as if we don’t feed and water him adequately, he always asks for an apple and something to drink. He also always has to get up once to pee, typically a few minutes after we’ve… Read more
Remember that time you met that girl and thought, “I could stay awake with her forever.” Every day is like that for a kid. This occurred to me when Noodle ratcheted up his going-to-bed protests last night. As always, he made any and every excuse he could find to stay up longer. He just had… Read more
The Indian Runner’s quack is a maniacal laugh. That’s what I thought from a distance, and I followed the cackle to a lean and slender bird who was judged first place in his category. We squeezed by and through gaggles of onlookers angling to get a peek at prize winning poultry. By all accounts, these… Read more