I can’t imagine living anywhere that is not near water. I grew up a short distance from a river—the White River, which empties into the Wabash River, which empties into the Ohio, which empties into the Mississippi, and finally, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The river represented the possibility of floating away, leaving behind everything and going someplace else. The rhythm of water, consistent, moving, and full of possibility, has offered deliverance since I was six years old.
The...
When I was young I loved to fish. In my hometown, there was a reservoir. It was Indianapolis’s water supply. All through grade school and middle school, I fished along its banks as often as I could. Every once and a while, my stepdad took me out in his skiff, and we’d fish the little inlets along the north end of the reservoir. This was before they started building lake houses and people started claiming ownership of the shoreline.
We’d also run trout lines, but often, especially after my...
I hate the wind. I hate it with a passion, and it has been that way forever
As an 11-year-old, I would ride my bike along country roads, as torrents of wind swept across fallow fields. I struggled to stay upright and keep my tear-stung eyes open. How often this happened, I don’t know. Once, a thousand times, it does not matter. I remember it.
I remember, too, setting aside my bike to run when I turned fourteen. I had caught the attention of the track coach, and his attention alone was enough to...
As a child, there was little I was good at. That wasn’t my conclusion. Other people—peers, teachers, stepparents—insinuated as much, stepparents foremost. The exception that proved the rule was lawnmowing. In this, I was second to none. No one argued that. And it saved my life.
I began mowing lawns when I was seven, four years before my life was completely upended. My mom moved a hundred miles away when I was eleven, believing I was better off with my stepdad, whom she had decided she was...
Boys are loud. They play rough, need space, can’t be faulted for being the way they are. Girls, well, we don’t need to talk about them. They just are. You know how they are. They want to please. They want to have fun, but as soon as you cross them, annoy them, get the least bit rough with them, they cry.
“So why are you so quiet?” my stepdad asked me.
“Why are you so sensitive?”
I was raised watching men have their way with women, and women seeming to cling to them. We were tough,...