Anna Henkens Schmidt

  Some conversations you return to long after they’ve finished. One I return to often took place poolside at a Cancun resort. We only had the girls then, and they were little. Our oldest explored the splash pad with her new best friend, who she’d met ten minutes earlier, while I made sure our eight-month old didn’t topple over into the water.  “Are you a dermatologist?” I swiveled my head to see a bikini-clad woman dangling her feet over the edge. She looked straight at me. “Excuse me?” I said. “Are you a dermatologist?” she asked again, confirming I’d heard correctly the first time. “You look like a dermatologist.” For a split second, I thought maybe I’d finally nailed my skincare routine.  “Cause you’re all wearing swim shirts,” she continued. Oh. That. It was true. I’d learned early in the summer that slathering sunblock on myself, a four-year-old, and a baby made for a miserable experience. So I went out and purchased three SPF 50 swim shirts. They held up nicely agai...

How much would you charge to blow into a dog’s mouth? Keep in mind that the going rate is between $500-$700. Why the range? I wondered the same thing.  What constitutes the extra $200?  The number of breaths transmitted to the canine? Or is it a per minute rate? And what happens if the dog requires resuscitation beyond the $700 mark?  These were the questions I faced at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday morning when dropping off the beloved family dog for a tooth extraction. The woman at reception slid a paper across the desk.  “Because anesthesia is involved, consent is required if you’d like CPR performed on your dog in case of an emergency.” I looked at the boxes. Box One: Yes ($500-$700) Box Two: No (Dead dog) Okay, the dead dog in parenthesis was my personal addition, but it was implied. I looked between the empty boxes and the quivering dog at my feet. Even though I grew up as a farm girl in western Nebraska, I have to admit the dog has wormed his way into family member st...

The moon captivates and incites imagination. It transforms humans into werewolves, stabilizes our seasons, amplifies magic, tracks our time, and pulls the oceans toward the coastlines. Both real and imagined, humanity has bestowed great power on the great, orbiting rock. It's beautiful and otherworldly and yet it belongs to all of us. Together we watched the footage from Artemis 2 and our fascination with the moon grew. The four astronauts flew farther from Earth than any humans in more than fifty years, and as they swung around the far side of the moon, something remarkable happened. The sun disappeared behind it, its corona forming a glowing halo around the darkened lunar surface. Even from 252,756 miles away, the moon could not shine on its own. With our eyes so focused on the beauty of the moon, we can lose sight of the true power behind it. Because without the sun, the moon would be nothing. Sure, it'd still be held in orbit by Earth's gravitational pull, but no one wo...

Two bicyclists stopped mid-pedal in the center of the road. “Have you seen a strange man in the neighborhood?” the woman asked. “No.” I tightened my grip on the dog’s leash. “What kind of strange man?” The couple traded looks. “Really strange,” the woman said. “He had a rolling suitcase.” I wasn’t sure how this defined strange, but I shook my head.  “We had to call the cops on him a few nights ago,” the man said, “for starting a fire in our yard.” That got my attention. “A fire?”  The woman gripped her handlebars. “We think he’s homeless, and he’s going around trying to camp in backyards.” “He ran off before the cops could find him,” the man added. “But they said to call if we see him again.” “That’s creepy,” I said. “I’ll keep a look out.” They waved and remounted their bikes.  Inside, I relayed the news to my family. We ate dinner and thought nothing more about it. 

  I begged for glasses in elementary school. A few of my friends rocked new prescriptions, and I turned green with envy. Their eyes failed them, and somehow this made them special. There was glamour in myopia. I’d buy sunglasses and knock out the lenses, desperate to share in whatever attention I thought a diagnosable condition might attract. I avoided carrots, tempted Apollo by staring into the sun, and sat too close to the TV. Despite my best efforts, my only diagnosis was perfect vision. My childhood fantasy of glasses passed with my love of My Little Pony figurines, and by middle school, I felt relief at not having to deal with lenses or face the absolute horror of touching my own eyes to insert contact lenses. Shudder. No, thank you.  Fast-forward through high school, college, and early adulthood. I visited the optometrist, with no great enthusiasm, because my husband’s work insurance covered annual eye exams. Every four or five years seemed good enough. By this time, I’d...

My brother, Donald, sent me a text from Costa Rica this morning: “There’s an old story about a Nebraskan who retires. He puts a snow shovel over his shoulder and walks south ’til someone says, ‘What’s that thing?’ And that is where he lives out the rest of his days.” I didn’t make it quite as far as Costa Rica, nor am I retired, but I have lived half of my life in the American Southeast. Snowstorms aren’t a regular occurrence in North Carolina, but they do occur with more regularity than hurricanes in Nebraska. Still, I’ve made it more than twenty years in the South without buying a snow shovel or an ice scraper. My kids don’t have sleds, but we have friends who do. At any given time, it’s anyone’s guess if we all have snow boots that fit. Fortunately, we have plenty of plastic grocery bags, which, paired with thick socks and rubber bands, make for decent winter footwear. With predictions of the snowpocalypse bearing down on us for the last week, I’ve had more than one friend reach out...