6 MINThree months of summer fun came at a high price. Another 3-day stay at Aunt Rosemary’s. I wondered what I had done that was so bad I deserved this punishment. The belt, the switch, three hours alone in my room, writing a hundred times ‘I will not be mean to my sister Jo ever again.’ I would’ve endured them all in exchange. And I had turned 9, the rite of passage year, big enough to help with ‘the chore.’
2 MINEpilogue: I found the grinder and I took care of it. Chapter Eight: So…after thirty years of marriage, we separated. Although it was probably brain damage that caused him to say the breaking words, I…
4 MINMy grandma looks like a flapper in her wedding photo from 1919. She smiles coyly into the camera, her large round eyes looking up from under the fringe of her bangs. Her hair is bobbed…
4 MINAUNTIE, THE BOOBS LOOK GREAT! After hours and hours of scrolling through bridal websites, I slumped in my desk chair, my body shaking with dejection. I was 64 years old, and after 20 years as…
3 MINOn February 20th, I went to bed and dreamt I was alone in a theater. It was a magnificent theater. Multistory mahogany walls. Twinkling crystal chandeliers. Modern plush seats. And a red velvet curtain which—as…
3 MINIn my early 20s, I followed a boy from Los Angeles to Cleveland. At the time, I believed I was madly in love with him. What I was truly seeking was the comfort and love…
4 MIN1973 Telegraph Avenue rolled out of bed mid-morning. Sleepyheads, aging hippies and the homeless emerged about the same time—crusty eyed, lint balls, manic hair, begging for a cup of coffee. Retail shops and multicultural restaurants…
11 MIN1975 The traffic on University Avenue behaved as if it’d dropped a tab of LSD. Frantic vehicles jousted in a concrete arena wallpapered with layers of tattered concert posters. A pedestrian would be fumigated with…
3 MINMemories of that school trip to Tasmania are few. I remember a triple-arched bridge spanning a river, I remember wandering from the group to stare and stare at the bridge framing the view. I remember…
4 MIN“You live in an apartment? I think it must be cute,” offered my friend naively when I reluctantly admitted I lived in the apartment complex everyone called Fat City. I coveted her home, her two-parent…
4 MINI remember trips with my mom to Baskin-Robbins as a kid. She would take my sisters and me after ballet class on sunny afternoons. I remember peering over the glass counters, looking down at the…
