The woods are the way I remember–not like they’ve been waiting 30 years for me to come back, but close. Still and yellow, falling light sharded between the trees lining the paved path that winds along a forest stream. Mom and I, on a glorious fall afternoon, are on a quest to find an old swimming hole and family gathering spot deep in the woods of our past. It gives texture and purpose (and argument)… Continue reading

Earlier this week I am held hostage in my own home. Boy, home “sick” from school, is bored. He can’t have his phone during these missed school hours, and his urge to crank away at that language arts project–like any real illness–escapes him. He passes the time looking up card tricks online. He gets one under his belt, then maybe half another one, and he is on the road. “Hey Mom, hey! Look at this.… Continue reading

In it: all promise lies in life and wait. In it, existence holds in a dark and silent song — the end already contained in its tight clutch, as in a child’s fist. Teleology is a love map: telling into being as God spoke world from alphabet. There is a destiny, I’m told that shapes our ends, rough hew them as it may. The gnostics tore from the stuff of bleeding and being this “secret”… Continue reading

31 July 2019 Fifty years ago this summer, men walked on the moon. Fifty years ago this month, a category 5 hurricane, one of only three ever to make landfall in the United States and the second largest in US history, struck Louisiana. It’s name? Camille. Hurricane Camille. According to one meteorological website: “The storm ranks as the 2nd most intense hurricane to strike the continental US….” and “The actual maximum sustained winds are not… Continue reading

The Exchange: a day later There is a good chance–cell phone, video games, social media and modern superficiality being what it is–that I will never see or hear from this child again. He will rejoin his group, evaporate like a little sigh, and be gone. Will he think of me? Will he think of the crazy Burk family and the fun times we had, the places we took him? Will he remember the beauty of… Continue reading

The Exchange, Day 9 Week One: Love at first sight. He is precious! He is so short! Wow, look at all this stuff he can do. Was that a double back flip? Do it again. Everything. Except speak English. Heaven is two boys propped up, side by side, on Ellie’s bed watching an America film dubbed over in French with English subtitles. What is that on your shoes? Can you please take your feet off… Continue reading

The Exchange, Day 17 One of the aspects of “modern” foreign exchange is all the technological trappings that come with it. Child is barely here before we are “orienting” him to American family ways, which I’m sure he’s already had, back in France, in preparation for an American homestay. This company dots its “i’s” and crosses its “t’s,” and then proceeds to hammer on every other letter of the alphabet, too. How do you say… Continue reading

The Exchange: Day 16 William learned to dive backwards the summer our French boy came to town. Camille taught him. I watched them working on it from across the pool, two boys at the end of twin boards, lightly bouncing, suspended in time, growing into their bodies, their friendship, the backflip at hand. They get into position, turn with their backs to the water. They bounce a little. They look across at each other. Bounce… Continue reading

The Exchange, Day 14 Will is at camp. If I were smarter I could pull it off his phone and enjoy it again–or share it: a video of the funniest night chez Burk this month. Maybe this decade. As usual, Camille had gone up to shower and retire for the night around 9 or 9:30. That was pretty typical. Since we were on the go each day, I thought it wise to turn in early,… Continue reading

The Exchange: Day 19 Toward the end of our time, it’s as though a switch gets flipped. I had forgotten, but the same thing happened with Anoukis. Like the half-deflated pool floaties in my garage, it’s as if the air has just gone out of him. Is it the heat? Is it our activity level? Is it staying up too late on the infernal cell phone? I can’t get to the bottom of it or… Continue reading