"Story Problems"

A story about my father and me, told through story problems

Whenever my scientist father would tuck me in at night, he would improvise story problems about the cosmos. These “Nighttime Convos” are among my most treasured memories of Dad.

So I had the idea to write an essay about our relationship told entirely through these mathematical word problems. The piece, “Story Problems,” came out yesterday in the Tahoma Literary Review. From my Author’s Note:

The story problem seemed an apt device for crafting an essay about our long estrangement and eventual reconciliation, told through his point of view and mine. All the problems are solvable mathematically, but most are unsolvable existentially.

Here’s an excerpt:

Daughter, age eight

Your dad is teaching you how to ride your Little Miss bicycle, with its U-shaped handlebars and banana seat. He holds the back of your bike as you push off without the training wheels. You’re shaking like a scaredy cat, and the bike shakes too. You hope your dad can’t see. But after a few loops around your cul-de-sac, the wind pastes your sun-bleached hair across your cheeks.

You follow your dad’s bike across a busy street into a new development in the Denver suburbs. You ride past homes surrounded by patchwork sod, green squares peeling up and browning at the edges. Soon, the road turns to hard gray dirt studded with gravel. A prairie dog field stretches before you, with homes under construction, their yawning foundations ready to swallow a little girl. You stop at the crest of a hill.

“Race ya!” your dad says.

Say the hill is 75 feet long and is pitched at a 10-degree incline. You and your bike together weigh 65 pounds. As you gain momentum, the ground rushes under your pedals and your front wheel fishtails wildly, out of control. You hit a patch of gravel and skid, forgetting how to use the coaster brakes. You descend for 7 seconds, then put your feet down to stop.

A) What velocity does your bicycle achieve?

B) How long are you airborne before your face hits the curb?

Read the full piece in Tahoma Literary Review here!