Category: TRINITY AND BEYOND

Nobody announces the last summer of childhood. There is no ceremony, no certificate, no kindly official standing beside the road to explain that the next turn will change everything. You simply wake one morning and discover that the familiar world has begun to feel smaller. I remember summers in...

The first time I heard a song about leaving home, I was sitting at home, which seemed like an excellent arrangement. The singer could travel the highways, suffer heartbreak, and sleep in unfamiliar towns. I could listen from a comfortable chair and still be present when supper was ready. But...

The first rebellion of my life was not particularly impressive. Nobody called the police. No windows were broken. I simply decided that an instruction, however reasonable, became less attractive the moment somebody gave it to me. This was not a philosophy. It was a reflex. I was growing into the...

The first time I understood that a door could be both an invitation and a warning, I was old enough to reach the knob and young enough to believe every room held a secret. At home, doors had meanings. The front door welcomed company, provided somebody had straightened the cushions. The kitchen...

The trouble began with a question. It usually did. I cannot remember which adult first told me to stop asking why. There were several candidates, all respectable people who had better things to do than explain the architecture of the universe to a boy with grass stains on his knees. Why did we go...

Some boys collected baseball cards. I collected sounds. Not deliberately, at first. A screen door had a rhythm. Rain on a tin roof could hold a note longer than any choir member. The refrigerator clicked before it started humming, and the neighborhood dogs conducted their evening arguments in...

Every family has rules. Some are written down, usually on the refrigerator, where they compete with grocery lists and invitations to events nobody wants to attend. Others live in the walls. You learn them by watching faces change when certain subjects enter a room. In our house, respect was...

The first guitar I remember wanting belonged to somebody else. That was true of most things worth wanting when I was young: they appeared in another person's hands, making sounds I couldn't yet explain. In Alabama, music was everywhere, though nobody thought to call it an education. It drifted...

I was born on April 27, 1969, which means I arrived just in time to miss the moon landing and spend the rest of my childhood hearing about it. The world was looking up. I was mostly concerned with being fed. Nobody asked whether I wanted to be born into this family, in this particular corner of...

The house was quiet, which was unusual. For years it had been filled with music, children, dogs, arguments, laughter, and appliances threatening retirement. Now the refrigerator hummed to itself while I stood in the bedroom holding a cardboard box marked KEEP. I had no idea what belonged in it. At...