Every week I open the box a little further, a photograph, a memory, a recipe finding its way back to my hands. I write it all down as it happens. The grief. The joy. The things I never saw coming. This is my journal, the raw and honest record of writing Her Hands His Eyes, not polished, not finished, real and in real time. You are not reading a book. You are inside the writing of one. Want to read each entry a full week before anyone else? I will also send you the first photograph from inside it. Never published anywhere. Not yet. Just you. Join Me in Opening The Box.
Some Days The Box Wins
Her Hands His Eyes —Entry 11 This was one of those weeks. I sat down to write on Tuesday. I opened the photographs. I looked at her face. I looked at his. I waited for the words to come. They…
Where Grief Found Me
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 10 There is a chapter in this book that I almost didn’t write. Not because I didn’t know what happened. I knew exactly what happened. I was there. Not because it wasn’t important. It…
The Bowl That Said Everything
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 9 What my mother knew without being asked. What a bowl of curry said about a young man at her table. I’ve been writing about Chris this week. Not the Chris of forty years…
The Morning We Left
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 8 What a six-year-old knew without knowing. What a father saw without saying. I was six years old. The car moved through Korat in the early morning. Light cut through the dust the way…
Her Hands Mother’s Love
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 7 I’ve been sitting with this one for a while now. I keep coming back to the memory of her hands. It has been in my files since the very beginning. The first scan…
Hackensack 1976 — He Just Held On
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 6 Six years old. 8,600 miles from home. One smile that made room for everything. I’ve been going through the slides this week. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes one stops you completely. Hackensack, New Jersey….
What Her Hands Knew
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 5 Four tries. One smell. The recipe she never wrote down. She never measured. Not once in her life. Fish sauce poured by feel. Lemongrass by handful. A taste, an adjustment, another taste, until…
It Was All of Us
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 4 The moment I understood what this book really was. I was typing when it hit me. Not dramatically. Not the way it happens in movies. I was just sitting at my laptop, coffee…
The Box on the Counter
Her Hands His Eyes Entry — 3 Twenty-four years. One Saturday morning. The first sentence. On a Saturday morning, Chris came into the kitchen, put his arms around me, and said, it’s time. He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to….
Measuring what my mother never wrote down.
Her Hands His Eyes — Entry 2 The recipes lived in her hands. Not on paper. Never on paper. She never measured. Not once in her life. Fish sauce poured by feel. Lemongrass by handful. A taste, an adjustment, another…
Why I Finally Opened It
Entry 1 — Her Hands His Eyes A brown cardboard box. Twenty-four years. Everything this family carried between two countries. I carried a brown cardboard box for twenty-four years without opening it. My father left it when he passed. Inside,…