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November 2010Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
John Wilmot
I sit on the curb in the shade of the bay laurel, head and arms piled on my knees, and admire Dolores Wilde in her green bikini across the street. She is a slim girl with gold hair and large, hazy green eyes. Dipping a sponge into a bucket, she slops on figure eights of suds, then rinses and rubs till her stepdaddy’s turquoise Buick gleams like the abdomen of a bluebottle fly.
By Poe BallantineNovember 2010July 2010Ancient peoples invented rites of passage in part to break the spell of childhood and move the initiate from the mother’s lap to the lap of the world. To this day, a person must dismantle the spell of childhood or fail to find their place in life.
Michael Meade
We lived in an old, two-story Arts and Crafts house with an elevator, which was permanently stuck on the second floor. We used it as a storage closet, and it was my favorite place in the whole house. Now I went into the elevator and shut the gate and sat in one of the antique ladder-back chairs that my father had put in there, and I looked over the Chopin piece in my piano book and tried to visualize my future.
By Christian ZwahlenJuly 2009An automatic transmission, a punch in the nose, Roy Rogers
By Our ReadersJune 2009A hockey rink, a volume of Anne Sexton’s collected poems, Planned Parenthood
By Our ReadersDecember 2008I felt a jolt. Since my father had left, no one had said the word sadness. I had heard the words stingy and schmuck, but sadness seemed obscene, even more taboo than the topic of sex. Sadness was like my period, something that came regularly, to be borne in silence.
By Kathryn Kefauver GoldbergNovember 2008It was just my mother’s luck: Fred left, and then she couldn’t get her contraceptive sponge out. She had forgotten about it through the long night, as she and Fred had fought and car headlights had panned across my bedroom walls.
By Meghan WynneAugust 2008Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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