The phrase “POSITIVE FOR A DELETERIOUS MUTATION” still hung in the air as I clicked off the phone. All caps. The way I’d later see it written on the official test results. “I’m afraid … your test … came back positive,” she had said. My test. Even the silence of … Read More

   A few years ago I rediscovered an unpublished manuscript my grandfather wrote in 1955 after participating in the rescue of an injured mountaineer on Denali, North America’s highest peak (then Mount McKinley). I’d seen this manuscript before, when my father was alive, but it took on greater significance now, … Read More

    My father died from cancer several years ago, at age 64. Only three months passed between diagnosis and death, and those months and the following years were emotionally charged and often isolating. But through that experience—through his death—came life. Something was born within me, and I began to create … Read More