Before I go, I have something to say

Author: Pam Kress-Dunn

Throwing in the Trowel

There we stood, looking out the windows of a house that had everything our current house did not – fireplace, bathrooms on each floor, a deck with a view. Most of all, it had a private yard. Our house on Wood Street was a sweet…

A Little Mayo on the Side

My life as a medical tourist began with an odd proposal from my dentist. Ted Murray had been trying to fix a lifetime of dental errors when he paused one day – me with my messed-up mouth as wide as I could get it, him…

I Miss You. Yes, You.

The photos in last week’s New York Times are startling: a desk missing a laptop, its cords dangling free. A dead mouse by the copier. Plants brown and crackling, inches from a watering can of stale water. The end times? Sort of. Welcome to the…

Apology Accepted

Julia Bond wants an apology. The apparel designer at Adidas had resigned herself to enduring racism at work until she saw the George Floyd video. Now she’s in her third month of standing outside her Portland building every day, joined by others to not only…

So Far Away

It’s been over seven months since I saw my granddaughters – Jane and Vera, identical twins, born five years ago. We held them within an hour of their birth, handing them around to their other grandparents, great-grandparents, and aunts in the hospital room. Even though…

It Was the Best of Fairs, It Was the Worst of Fairs

It’s been a long time since I went to the fair. When I say “the” fair, I don’t mean Dubuque County’s, but the Mississippi Valley Fair, in my hometown of Davenport. What I still love about that one is its location – right smack in…

A Racist in the Family

A Racist in the Family My grandpa, Grover Ripperton, was loving, and funny, and a complete racist. He bemoaned the integration of his beloved baseball games, calling the players nasty names that must have made my parents wince, but we never talked about it. My…

When Someone Calls You a Sheep

Do you wear a mask? Good for you! Has someone called you a “sheep” for doing so? It’s something that is happening to friends and family of mine, and it’s very strange. My daughter heard a man who passed her in the Target parking lot…

Locust Street McDonald’s

This is where I went after seeing her, this is where I stood in line for my food. After pretending to hold a conversation for an hour, the same thing over and over, and her begging to go back home, at lunchtime I left, drove…

Sleepwalker

Here to see our daughter, five-year-old Amy knocked on the door. Midnight frost hovered in the night air, about to settle like dust on the prairie’s broken wheat stems and her bare arms. In her white undershirt and panties, she’d tapped so quietly we almost…

Flyaway

A wedge of blue, like a powder-puff fairytale shoe, he lands on my feeder, edging in among the dun colored sparrows. “What kind of bird is that?” my husband asks, and I turn, prepared to be delighted. Perhaps an oriole, a bluebird, even a painted…

Love and Fury in a Plastic Box

Back when I was fertile, I had a diaphragm. Sturdy and practical, anything but romantic, it did its job. That bland rubber dam had a heightened significance during my first marriage. When I left Chris, love of my youth, father of my children, I purposely…

The Slip

In the fitful glow of the bedside gaslight, he spies her tantalizing new garment. Sewn of silk the color of a conch shell’s curved interior, hung by one lace strap on the bathroom door’s brass hook, it beckons. Lingerie, he thinks, finally she has purchased…

Bird of My Dreams

My life list of birds I have seen is pitifully short, just over forty at last count. They range from robins to much more exotic types. Take, for instance, pelicans. I had no idea they hung around these parts until, three years in a row,…

Another Thing My Assistant Can Do

Like all good assistants, mine should have a candy dish. It should be filled to nearly overflowing with all the candies I crave now and then, and especially now. Things like circus peanuts. No matter how small the bag, there are always too many circus…

Another Thing My Assistant Can Do

Ever since I started writing poetry seriously, I’ve wished for an app that does a very specific thing: show me how many of which words I’ve used. Words are important to poems — I mean, come on — and any poet worth her salt wants…

Another Thing My Assistant Can Do

I need an assistant to find an Airbnb for me. It drives me insane, looking at all the possibilities in, say, Austin, ranging from adorable tiny houses to alleged “ranches” on the edge of . . . somewhere. What does “cozy” mean? What does it…

Too Much Tenderness, or, The Anguish of Moving

I presented this sermonette to the UU Fellowship of Dubuque on July 24, 2016: Too Much Tenderness “We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it.” J.D. Salinger, the writer who brought this quote to my attention…

Sylvia Plath: Matter and Spirit

Herewith, a sermonette I delivered at the UU Fellowship of Dubuque on August 8, 2010:   Sylvia Plath: Matter and Spirit If you want to know who Sylvia Plath was and what happened to her, I can tell you in a handful of paragraphs. As…

“Help, Thanks, Wow” — Anne Lamott’s 3 Essential Prayers

Here’s a transcript of the sermonette I gave at the UU Fellowship of Dubuque on August 5, 2018   Today I want to introduce you to Anne Lamott, a quirky, cranky, funny, endearing writer of seven popular novels, one beloved book on how to write,…