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Every summer when watermelon came into season, we often kept one on the counter to be eaten, slice by slice, over the course of a day or two. My Mom, brother, and I all ate watermelon like normal people: in tire-sized rounds or half-moon ends. But my Dad had the mind-boggingly frustrating habit of digging Read more
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Years ago, a hospice patient with dementia asked me what I was “heart-ing” for. A moment later, she then asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Living outside the bounds of time, she asked me this question as earnestly as if we were two schoolgirls imagining our futures ahead of us Read more
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Did you know the North Star changes? I did not know this until a year ago this past December when my friend DeAnna presented me with an extraordinary gift: an artisanal chocolate Advent calendar celebrating constellations of the night sky. What made this gift extraordinary extended well beyond the conscientiously sourced and exquisitely crafted confections. Read more
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Yesterday, I walked a part of the Sonoma coast—one of the most beautiful and dramatic places in the world—and could not, for the life of me, relax. My mind was on auto-pilot with what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. It’s like I arrived at vacation and the only thing my mind had scheduled for our itinerary was Read more
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“Here in California, fruit grows heavy on the vine. There’s no gold, I thought I’d warn ya. And the hills grow brown in the summer time,” Kate Wolf. Sometimes you hear a song for the first time and it knocks the wind out of you because it gives voice to something you have needed to Read more
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This is my family’s third Thanksgiving since my Dad died, our third without him in the kitchen, without his fingerprint on nearly every dish that we eat, without him speed-talking his go-to prayer that none of us could ever fully decipher. We are without him yet we do our best as a family to not Read more
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In 2016, a conservative Christian friend reluctantly voted for Donald Trump, despite her personal dislike for him, out of a long-held allegiance to Republican ideas and pro-life commitments. Now, as a matter of conscience, she cannot vote for him again. She aligns with the objections to his presidency made by other Christians like Mark Galli, Read more
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My friend’s brother, a self-styled doomsday prepper who proudly identifies as a “conspiracy theorist,” ran into an unexpected obstacle when COVID-19 arrived. In all his loud preparation for some vague apocalyptic future wrought by liberals, he had somehow forgotten the face masks. When my friend told me this, we both laughed — less at his anxiety as Read more
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On an afternoon walk through a large retreat center property in Northern California, I saw an engraved wood sign to the left of the main road that read: “Mushroom Trail.” Adorable little toadstools were carved under the lettering. The sign might as well have read: “Smurfs This Way.” Without hesitation I turned off the pavement Read more
Heather Isaacs 