Author Archives: mellskog

AS NURSE SARAH TOOK Ray’s blood pressure with a cuff on his little leg, Andy told her that I told him to “shut up” before we got to the urgent care center on Tuesday. I said another “s” word as … Continue reading →

WHO KNOWS WHAT ALBUM holds that photo of Grandpa, the one of him — a retired mortician — wearing jeans, a white undershirt and a railroad man’s blue-and-white pinstriped cap while cutting my brother’s hair in our kitchen. The joke … Continue reading →

ALL OF THE WOMEN and men stood off stage in the shadows and listened to their biography being read — which included the sexual assault most survived as children — before striding into the bright lights to model black, blue … Continue reading →

IN THE BLACK CHURCH, where I spent all of my 20s and the early part of my 30s, they talk back to the preacher. “It’s Friday!” he would thunder from that old pulpit at Park Avenue Church in Minneapolis. “But … Continue reading →

CARL MOONED HIS KINDERGARTEN classmates in the cafeteria on Tuesday and, consequently, he ate lunch alone in the school office. On some level this is snicker material — if you are not the parent of the child doing the mooning. … Continue reading →

AS WE WALKED INTO the olde town cafe for Mickey Mouse pancakes, an older man with a white giant poodle ambled out to his red convertible — its top down, of course. Sun poured through the windows over the sandwich … Continue reading →

NEARLY HUNDRED-MILE GUSTS IN Boulder County in late February sent tumbleweeds cartwheeling across the road, which brought that sunburned pioneer woman in the billowing apron to mind. She came into focus for me last September, when my husband, the three … Continue reading →

WHEN I ASKED ANDY why he put the tiny white toilet with the flip lid into the tiny blue-and-pink playpen, he looked up from the old metal dollhouse. “Because there was a tornado,” he said. My middle kid, my 4-year-old … Continue reading →

SOME DAY I MAY wear a ring with amethyst, garnet and turquoise stones to remind me of how much I treasure my kids. Seems like only older ladies wear these birthstone rings, women who finally got the money and the … Continue reading →

WHITNEY HOUSTON’S VOICE SENDS me back to a dorm room in Minnesota, where my roommates and I would dance and sing along with her hit, “How Will I Know,” even as the guys living below us started beating the floor … Continue reading →