Phantom Limbs I tell my son each family has a tree. I pencil lines on a page leading to his father, his sister, me: “People, like trees, have branches.” Branches in our tree bow abruptly on one side: One cracked unceremoniously—it was brittle— Two committed suicide—snapping off willfully— Another was in slow decay …

  I. I must have seemed lost or incongruous, like a puppy on a plane, sitting alone in the second row of a crowded bus going to the airport. It seems quaint now to think about the Palestinian refugees in the camps on Aleppo’s outskirts (no one seems to remember them), two of whom turned …

  I have lived a long time, though sorry to say I have not seen it all. As for the people I have met, virtually all are worthy to be written about. But here I have chosen to write about two of the more notable ones. Soon after the birth of the 1960’s I was …

  I was raised at the end of a dirt road that wound two miles through a dense pine forest. The place didn’t even have a name but it was seven miles from the interstate and fifteen miles from the small town of LaCombe, Louisiana.  On the map it was simply referred to as Ward …