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Parenting
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Remodeling The Hovel
I dig another nailhead out of the old siding with the cat’s-paw, slip a crowbar around it, and then draw the 16d sinker out. The squawk of the nail letting go jangles my nerves. If an unwelcome memory wanted to announce itself with a noise, the cry of a rusty nail would do the job.
August 2002
Fiction
The Counter
It’s not as easy as it looks, standing all day in the murky light of the museum. My feet ache and swell with blood, my back hunches in protest. People shuffle by, but they don’t see us. That’s why the museum hires immigrants: we are invisible.
July 2002
Quotations
Sunbeams
May 2002In the beginning there was my mother. A shape. A shape and a force, standing in the light. You could see her energy; it was visible in the air. Against any background she stood out.
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Drowning Revisited
It is always someone’s fault. A drowning is rarely blameless. At the very least, there’s a lingering feeling that it could have been prevented. Your friend recommends a good vacation spot in the Bahamas to her neighbors; they go, and the husband drowns.
May 2002
Fiction
Blue Flamingo Looks At Red Water
That bus is going to slam into my daughter. In my stop-action memory, everything lies bare a grace note before the accident. The school bus grinds forward stupidly, a yellow hippo. Henry is at the crosswalk, waiting for me as I turn the corner. He is not holding Mary’s hand.
May 2002
Readers Write
Mothers & Daughters
Remembering slights and fights, going horseback riding, swimming with dolphins
May 2002
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Your Mum And Dad
My parents hail from a generation who must arrive at least an hour before every engagement, for whom being on time is a divine mandate. Thus, we pull into the Charlotte airport well before the departure time for their return flight to Pittsburgh.
March 2002
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Happiness Box
While they visited, that invisible beast Loneliness would shift on his paws and pad quietly out of the room, only to return faithfully when darkness fell and I crawled into a bed that was too big. Lucky for me, the kids always stayed as long as possible. Norah, especially, hated to leave. She’d cling to my hand or my neck with the ferocity of the early-abandoned.
March 2002
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