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Our favorite game was called “Spy on Stella.” We loved to watch her when she thought she was alone and unobserved. It was our way of having power over her, for the few moments she dozed in the green chair in the living room or stood in the kitchen cooking, singing along with Jack Jones on the stereo.
By Kim AddonizioJune 1988Jenny sat inside the roar of the plane, concentrating on distracting herself. She was flying to Seattle in response to one of those phone calls during which the world momentarily freezes in its orbit. “I’m a friend of your father’s,” the woman had said.
By Kay Levine SpencerJune 1988Adopting, reconnecting with an old friend, being AWOL in peacetime
By Our ReadersJune 1988My mother never held a baby that way. Even when she was feeding my brother, he always somehow rested on her arm, never melted into her body. In New Hampshire, I finally said something to my brother about never having been treated that way when I was a baby. “No,” my brother said. “Our mother would have held us out there with a pair of tongs if she could have.”
By David GuyJune 1988My mother sang and laughed. She had dark hair that gradually turned silver. She felt that no matter how little the money or how bad the loss, it was OK to have fun.
By Stephen T. ButterfieldMay 1988Occasionally, when Dad belted up his trousers with twine, she turned as brittle as snapbread, but in those early years, she was usually willing to dismiss our days as the pruning from which decorous bloom must one day erupt.
By Katherine VazMarch 1988“I only wish I could be so young and carefree,” your father says when he comes home from work. He doesn’t remember what it’s like. The pressure, the decisions.
By Deborah ShouseMarch 1988Feeling safe in a father’s arms, sighting a lost yo-yo in the lake, being on Mars
By Our ReadersMarch 1988Though several members of my childhood family have died, the passing of all but two of them took place unexpectedly and at a distance, and I was not able to say goodbye. On two occasions I was there, the dying spoke to me, and their conversation was memorable. Their last words to me seemed a summary of their lives and a way of giving me a part of themselves that would remain in the world after they had left it.
By Michael NessetFebruary 1988Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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