Tomorrow will mark a year since I had my stroke. It's an occasion that, according to my daughter, Ginny, I should view as important. But I've spent enough time staring at death; I don't want to think ... [+]
Originally published in the Indiana Review
They called her the girl with the big ears, though they didn't call her that to her face. That is, not to her ears. Not exactly. Not intentionally. They were sitting in the cafeteria—one line of buff Formica tables after another—talking about Mark Russell, the Spanish kid, the one you couldn't tell was Spanish, not from his looks or his name. They spoke over the roar of two hundred nervous voices and pairs of stainless steel silverware scraping against plastic trays. The air was full of inflated seriousness, laughter, and insinuations that someone had too much—or not enough—familiarity with se