"No fair!" a friend complained. "You get stuff for eight days and we only have one." While I knew that Santa did not exist, I found myself pining for what he delivered down her chimney. The pack of synthetic yarn ribbons I received, which frayed like my frizzy hair, could not compare to the Barbie DreamHouse towering under her tree.

Along with dill pickles, dill tomatoes, and horseradish, there was gefilte fish swimming in gelatin in a jar—the cold, colorless substance sticking to the pockmarked whitefish. Salami and eggs were about all my father knew how to make.

Monday, October 9, 2017 my 92-year-old grandmother his family of seven a single mom with two young boys / awakened by a tree crashing wind howling, dog barking smoke alarm blaring a neighbor banging frantically on the front door / got out of bed at 1:30, 2:30, 3:30 AM opened the curtains & saw ashes floating...

My father knew his parents had speculated about the prodigal son in San Francisco. The letter he sent would have put their suspicions to rest. He hadn’t gone into all the whys and wherefores leading to the decision. Just that the conception was an accident that could have happened to anyone.

It was at the end of another season in Alaska when Jessica Eden confronted a peculiar creature. Each year, the biologist conducted field studies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a region so vast and unmarked there are no roads or human trails. Only animal tracks.

Facilitating classroom discussions at junior and senior high schools, my associate and I fielded the usual questions—Doesn’t a girl ask for it if she’s dressed like a slut? Why would a man let himself be raped? Don’t most people lie about being assaulted?—as if we hadn’t heard these assumptions dozens of times.

A few days before my 16th birthday, I returned home to find my mother's note on the kitchen counter: "M has joined the Moonies. I've gone to save him." Images of shaved heads and saffron robes danced in my mind as I mistakenly pictured my older brother chanting Hare Krishna.

She said beauty is what saved her, time and again: arias, flowers, food arranged artfully on a plate. She was happiest ordering Chardonnay at a museum café overlooking a French garden. Or going to the symphony, the ballet, the opera, or a play. Beauty is what rescued my mother from a childhood bereft of any.

She watched her firefighter-river guide-mountaineer unpack his coiled ropes and carabiners. I'm a man of commitment, honesty and love, he announced. He lit the wood stove and made stir-fry while she wept.

The first bungee jump from the Kawarau Bridge in the 1980s became Queenstown’s claim to fame, but it was the marketing from a local skydiving operation that enticed us the most. Was I the kind of person who could jump from an airplane?

She insisted she would never fall in love with him, which made him cry into his soup. He retaliated by losing his virginity with her best friend. She couldn’t acknowledge her jealousy or anger, even considered herself deserving of the betrayal for not loving him enough.

Hitchhiking through the Northland of New Zealand, I could have been winding along any northern California coastal road. It wasn’t only the wild flowers sprinkling the landscape with spring, or the sheep grazing on green hills, that reminded me of home.

The beach bars were boarded up for the season—their plastic chairs huddled against the wind. Sitting in wet sand, I shirked the stares of a passing stranger. I longed for shared laughter with my lover and missed pouring Portuguese over my tongue.