He goes by the name Cowboy Pete. He tells me this as I ask if I might sit down. “Free country” he replies without looking up. It is 2020 and so I sit down about 8 feet away on the concrete. I have seen him for a few weeks now, leaning up against the brickContinue reading “Cowboy Pete”
Author Archives: katewhitson
Covid Confusion
It began with a vague sense of confusion. You heard something on the news, then someone mentioned what they had heard. You pushed it aside, a virus out of China, perhaps the avian flu returning once again. You heard stories about people hoarding toilet paper. What ??? Toilet paper? Then you stopped by Sam’s ClubContinue reading “Covid Confusion”
Consequences
Growing up in a large Irish Catholic family, you knew certain things to be true. # 1 You would be going to Mass on Sunday. This was not up for debate, or a vote or subject to your current position on the Catholic church. You were going. # 2 If you were a female, youContinue reading “Consequences”
Three Day Minimum
My best friend growing up in Texas was Karen. She lived two doors down from us, and our home lives could not have been any more different. I was number seven of eight kids in a big Irish Catholic family. My sisters and brothers ranged from their twenties to a two year old, my babyContinue reading “Three Day Minimum”
The Seedling
One day recently, as I was going about my normal routine, a thought popped into my head. “To grow a seed is the greatest form of hope” I don’t know where this came from, or why it popped into my head. When thoughts like these occur, I call them “Stray dogs of thought” There areContinue reading “The Seedling”
Psych Ward
As I pull my car into the hospital parking lot, there are two ambulances outside the main entrance. One is under the portico, not running, doors shut. The other is a few feet ahead of it, where three paramedics stand around a stretcher talking. The man on the stretcher is upright, belted to the stretcher,Continue reading “Psych Ward”
Table for Two
Throughout my adult life , I have been curious about other people’s dinner routine when they were growing up. To this day, I have yet to encounter anyone who has told me that their mother also prepared two dinners every night. I grew up as number seven of eight children and my mother would prepareContinue reading “Table for Two”
Seek and Find
The first back porch that I remember was a 10 x 10 concrete slab off the back of our house in Naperville, Illinois. It was tucked into the corner where the kitchen met the family room and looked out over the lawn and the cornfields beyond. Our neighborhood did not have fences. Our yard stretchedContinue reading “Seek and Find”
Why “The view from my back porch ?”
Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde. “Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft I asked my close friend to preview the piece that I am posting today. After giving me her feedback , she posed a direct question,Continue reading “Why “The view from my back porch ?””
The View from my Back Porch 