Monday , August 31st , 19 87 My two younger brothers and I are in the basement of the only home any of us have ever known. In Kansas, the basement is where you go when the sky turns mean. We’d done this drill countless times before. Tornado sirens screaming, the house creaking like it might peel apart. Our mom calmly herding us down the steps while our dad heads outside , as if violent storms were something to witness not fear. And tonight, like so many other nights, there was a storm overhead but it had nothing to do with the weather. Upstairs, our parents who had been married fifteen years, were tearing into each other with words sharp enough to rattle the foundation. The anger in their voices traveled through the floorboards, through the walls and through us. We weren’t just hearing their rage, we were absorbing it. Families fight. I understood that. Parents argue. Totally normal. What wasn’t normal was this . Our parents had never raised their voices at each other. Not o...
In the heart of downtown Topeka, across from the State Capitol, stands Assumption Catholic Church. It’s a Mission-and-Renaissance-Revival brick monolith from the 1920s that was built to survive tornadoes, scandals, and the weekly parade of restless kids shoved inside to worship a God they weren’t entirely sold on. Next to it sits Assumption Grade School, a mid-century, no-frills building where the hallways reek of industrial cleaner and the K-8 classrooms smell like pencil shavings and boredom. Outside, an asphalt playground waits like a killing field where kids bleed for kickball glory and learn the hard way that falling on blacktop means a trip to the ER for stitches, casts, or a new pair of teeth. Between the church, the school, and the homeless who drift in for free bologna sandwiches from the church’s rectory, the whole block feels like its own ecosystem: strange, isolated and self-policing. I had been part of this ecosystem my entire scholastic life. Raised by i...