The first twenty minutes hadn’t been great. I stood in front of the 5th-grade class, most of them looking bored, and tried my best to make pre-writing fun. Pre-writing isn’t fun. Graphic organizers are boring.  Webs with bubbles and phrases like “How did it feel?” and “What could I hear?” and “”What did I see?” are the worst part of writing. Most writers I know skip pre-writing altogether, but 5th-graders aren’t most writers. They’re eleven-year-olds with a standardized test coming up in two weeks.
“Close your eyes,” I said. “Go to …

He wished he could see her again, spinning in circles on the shore, arms spread wide, dancing beneath branches bleached white by salt, and sun, and time.

My favorite part was after the trencher, once it’s loud, vibrating blade finished digging through the earth, and we began to lay the pipes. After the trencher, the world was silent. Even when we were working in a yard like the one that day, near the overpass, things seemed quiet.
This was our third sprinkler installation. Nathan and I worked together at the church I started a year-and-a-half earlier. I hired him to lead the band. Kind of hired him- we paid him $500 a month, when we could. In that …