Family Ties
My lady’s taking paid maternity leave for the next three and a half months. When I learned this, my first thoughts, understandably, were: What about the Gross Domestic Product?! What about worker productivity?! The U.S., along with Swaziland, has no national law mandating paid maternity leave, so, to me, three and a half months seems excessive. My lady pointed out that we live in Colombia, (more…)
Special occasions. Weddings, funerals. Lover days and mamma days. A wrist corsage the size of your date’s forearm for a high school dance. A cheesy apology. In East Asia, I used to buy bunches of small white flowers to breathe some life into my drab government-owned apartment. I’d get funny looks from the cashiers. I figured it was the whole “oh look at the sensitive foreign man buying flowers (more…)
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. – Rainer Maria Rilke
I crossed the border into Vietnam by bus from China. It was one of those buses that stop in every small town, stop when the driver needs a restroom, a bite to eat or spots a friend to talk to, invariably turning what should be a three-hour ride into an all-day affair. I was reading a story about the origin of the Vietnamese people, that they were descended from the love of a dragon and a fairy. But I’m interrupted by (more…)
I’m on vacation this week. I need some time to recover from the last vacay and I need to mentally prepare for the next one. I know what you’re thinking, “You un-American, s.o.b., who the hell do you think you are, taking off more than three days of work without stressing over it? Where’s the pride? The patriotism?” (more…)