I’d be up until three or four o’clock in the morning, when I first started reading Hemingway, jumping up, saying, ‘Mom, listen to this, isn’t this something, isn’t it unbelievable?’ I’d shake her, and she’d wake up.

I felt crazy asking for directions to her house. Over the phone, Lee began, “Get on 8 west, at the Sports Arena exit you make a left, then when you get to West Point Loma ...

It looked like the fossil of a dinosaur, there on the CAT scan film. The veterinarian, Dr. Marjorie McMillan, pointed her index finger, the nail clipped, unpolished, toward the skull. “There and there,” she said. ...

When I was a kid growing up in the late ’50s, there was a push to make pool a family game. I remember ads showing “Mom” — permed blond, high heels, and in a chemise ...

Can you imagine somewhere you’ve been? I mean, in person, actually been. That all depends — on what you call imagination, and how you want it to work for you. I was in Southern California ...