Memoir

11 MINWhat doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except for cougars. Cougars will kill you. So will cancer. My grandmother shoved aside her breakfast and grabbed my hand. Her fine, wrinkled fingers wrapped around mine. Sunlight…

6 MIN“High school sweethearts.” It was a practical shorthand for explaining how we’d met.  But as our marriage accrued years and then decades, the label took on the weight of cumulative approval, often provoking surprised admiration or…

6 MINCrush at first sight. I saw you before I saw anyone else. I was new. You had your crowd. I could see that you were out of my league from the beginning but it didn’t…

4 MINThey emerged from the jungle like a vision from Brigadoon painted by Gauguin: two youthful women in colorful sarongs, barefoot and bearing mounds of roots and leafy herbs in baskets balanced across their shoulders at…

3 MINOur father was 76 when our mother died. For almost three years, he’d been taking care of her while her health failed and her mood plummeted. She morphed from a fun-loving, kind, irreverent redhead into…

4 MINGreat Aunt Tana trudged to my grandmother’s house every Saturday with her canvas bag filled with wonders. She was a short, rather rotund elderly lady who had a sweet smile and sincere hug. I looked…

4 MINWhen you are poor in a nice neighborhood, you have to be secretly poor. The summer before I started ninth grade, my father had finally drunk himself out of his downtown office job. He spent…

5 MINIt had to happen, sooner or later. I’d always thought I’d hoped it would be later, but if the truth be known, I suppose that all along I’d wanted it to happen now, and be…

4 MINIt was summertime and our family spent over a month motor-touring—camping out of the back of a red-and-white Oldsmobile station wagon, visiting relatives, national parks, and occasionally staying in motels with swimming pools. I’m able…

6 MIN“How about I call you Big Mama?” I asked, stroking her beard. A resigned expression was her only answer. It was just one more thing over which she had no control. Her real name was…

9 MINIn an era when most families were configured like the Cleavers – at least from the outside looking in – my brother and I were the envy of the neighborhood kids in the 60’s because…

6 MINNo matter how acceptable, how common divorce has become, telling the soon to be child-from-a-broken-home that their world is about to change is never simple.           We stayed together for the children’s sake might be my…