We sat around the table at a downtown restaurant, a group of women all well into middle age and beyond, savoring a few easy minutes in the final crazed days of the holiday season. Looking around, it occurred to me the eight of us would…
I hope that when you opened your eyes this morning--no, even before you opened them, even earlier than that--I hope that when you first found yourself swimming into morning light and out of whatever dreams you’d been having, somewhere in your mind there rang out…
My son, who has been working in Japan, is on his way home. We haven't seen him in several months and I'm hungry for some time with him. My son has grown up to be a wonderful man; an adventurer, a tinkerer and a master…
(Image courtesy © Hergé-Moulinsart 2010) Deep in the heart of almost any child, there hides a secret wish to, at least on occasion, be an orphan. Free of all parental control, rudderless, able to decide what one will eat, where one will go and how…
Each year, after Thanksgiving dinner, some time after the last of the dishes are washed and before the pie comes back out again, I bring up a big handwoven basket from the storeroom in the basement. The basket is the size of a bed pillow,…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) We sat quietly in the car as I drove across town, the road-grimed headlights piercing the twilight ahead of us. I didn’t even think to turn on the radio. It was only 4 o’clock but it felt much later. I had…
This is a repost of one of my favorite columns. I recorded it for Spokane Public Radio several years ago and it is available on Public Radio Exchange. This year, the audio essay was broadcast by Delta College Public Radio in Michigan. November 22, 2004…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) I turned the corner, down an unfamiliar street, my mind so oblivious to where I was going I might just as well have been a dog with its head out the window, lost in the delicious rush of mysterious and fragrant…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) I had a few October days to myself so I spent them in the little town of Banff, in Alberta, Canada. While there, it was impossible not to catch the energy of autumn, flagged by the flashing gold of the aspen…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) In the memory, we are walking down the wide stone steps--I must have been no more than five or six at the time--and I was holding my grandfather’s hand as we left an upper floor of the public library and made…
Not that there’s ever been any shortage of evidence, but my three older children now have solid proof that we love the youngest more. By their standards, of course. When I was raising my three older children, three little stairsteps born in just under six…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) I had a single ticket for the Rocky Mountaineer, the luxurious train that crosses some of the most scenic routes in Canada. So did the woman in the seat beside me. We boarded in Vancouver, British Columbia and for two days…
Each October I honor my grandmother, a breast cancer survivor, by re-posting this 2006 column. She was, and will always be, an inspiration and a guiding force in my life. CAM The Home Planet: Community potent weapon against breast cancer Cheryl-Anne Millsap Staff writer Oct…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) Like someone who had looked straight into the baking sun, the hot New Mexico desert, a landscape of painted sand and strange towering rock formations, was burned into my mind’s eye. Even as I settled into the window seat of the…
(Photo courtesy Georgia O'Keefe Museum) Coronado led the expedition to what would eventually become the state of New Mexico seeking a king’s ransom in gold. But what he found instead was a wide, burning landscape of stark contradictions and unique natural beauty; a land of…
When I was in my mid-20s, I spent a summer in New York City working and studying. I immediately fell in love with the city and found my pulse danced to the constant rhythm of traffic and people; to a compact space filled with people…
I woke up to feel my heart pounding, beating like a fist against the cage of my ribs, and for a moment I was confused. I realized I’d had a bad dream and just enough traces of the frightening things I’d imagined remained to poison…
I was sitting in an airport, somewhere, I don’t even remember which airport it was, watching two women in the row of chairs across from me. Like most travelers these days, they were surrounded by all the necessary carry-on items: purses, a takeout bag with…
It takes some getting used to when your children grow up and leave home. After years of living according to their schedules, from 2 a.m. feedings to a 2 a.m. curfew, even when they’ve been on their own for a while, it still feels odd…
As a young girl, inclined to daydream, I filled the pages of my diary with all the plans I made. I wrote late into the night under the tent of my blanket, working by flashlight, chewing on the end of my pen between bursts of…
It’s always a bit of a jolt when we see ourselves through another’s lens. Suddenly things we’d never noticed stand out. I was in Berlin recently. What has happened there since the wall fell is interesting. At the time of the reunification West Berlin was…
The scene in the morning was terrible. What was left of the torn, bloodied carcass of my beloved Anacona hen, the crazy, flighty Italian chicken whose antics never failed to amuse me, was tossed like so much trash in front of the henhouse. The two…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) The day before I left Spokane and caught an early flight to Germany, the weather was wet and cold. More like late winter than late spring. Everywhere I went people were grumbling about the rain. “Sorry you have to be out…
(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap) On my last day in Switzerland, I walked around Zurich, visiting museums, wandering up and down cobblestoned streets window-shopping and trying to lock it all in my memory. I strolled along the river and over bridges, people-watching, stopping to look at…
I brought the sheets and pillowcases in from the clothesline, stiffened by the wind and still warm from the late afternoon sun. Before I folded each piece, I buried my face in the fabric and breathed deeply. Who doesn’t love that smell? Like sunlight spun…
Cheryl-Anne Millsap's Home Planet column appears each week in the Wednesday "Pinch" supplement. Cheryl-Anne is a regular contributor to Spokane Public Radio and her essays can be heard on Public Radio stations across the country.
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