The Sandbox
If my Wednesday interviews are lessons in living from wise folks, “The Sandbox” is my open space to consider what I’ve learned from them, what new ideas or revelations they have sparked—a kind of memoir unfolding in real-time. Here, you’ll find those collected essays, which are published one week after each triptych of interviews has been completed. ♣
The Sandbox #5: Lost & Found
I was a grade-schooler the evening our house in West Virginia was robbed. It was a rainy Valentine’s Day, and we were at an elementary school basketball game when thieves pried open a side door whose deadbolt was a heavy, oversized chair.
The Sandbox #4: Storytelling
Was there something else I’d rather be? Someone else I’d rather be? I wondered if I should tell Gio about the four pandemic months I spent studying to be a counselor before I realized the depth of my hatred for creating Google Slides and writing research papers in APA format. How I wanted to hug my old Associated Press Stylebook by the end of the semester.
I settled for the truth.
“I’m going to be a writer when I grow up,” I said with shaky confidence.
“Cool,” he said, offering a validating fist bump.
The Sandbox, No. 3: Mythologies
The peppery, charcoal scent had dogged my senses all evening, from the moment I removed the jersey from its drawer in mid-March. It was too familiar to be the musty odor of a dark corner and lost time, but still, I could not place it.
The Sandbox, Issue No. 2: Absence & Plenty
The silver-haired man at the table in front of me swiveled in his chair to face me.
I was attending my first writer’s conference, in the spring of 2022, and the Andy Griffith lookalike and I were waiting for a concurrent session to begin. We made small talk: names, how far we had traveled to be there, etc.
Then he got down to business.
The Sandbox: Issue No. 1
The drive-in movie theater in my grandmother’s town was a wide, grassy lot on the side of a rural road where the only other memorable landmark for miles was a frozen custard stand. The beat-up metal speaker box you hooked over the car window garbled with static, breaking up the rhythms of the countryside with the congested squawk of a Hollywood soundtra…