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The instructions that came with this incarnation aren’t easy to decipher. One sentence can take years, even decades, to figure out — and even then I can’t be certain I’ve got it right.
By Sy SafranskyOctober 2004Unplanned pregnancies, justices of the peace, sans shoes
By Our ReadersOctober 2004Before leaving, I had vowed I would not go looking for Jim Morrison’s grave. The idea of making such a pilgrimage at my age struck me as vaguely ridiculous. Yet there I was, on my last morning in Paris, wandering mapless in the sprawling necropolis, looking for the tombstone of a singer I had barely thought of in almost thirty years.
By Irene SveteSeptember 2004“Rat check,” my father would say when he came home from work. And we would run to the various traps to see if we’d caught the rat. We slept lightly, each hoping and fearing that we would hear the slam of the trap in the night and be the one to go running with the news that the rat at last was dead. But we found nothing, heard nothing.
By Andrew AlexanderSeptember 2004Three beloved cats, one sand-painting ceremony, four pairs of blue-shag sandals
By Our ReadersSeptember 2004I knew my mother would find out before fall, when I’d leave home to find a real job. I’d watch her at the sink, her roan hair falling down, her round face red from the steaming dishwater, and I’d think about telling her, but it was impossible to open my mouth. I was sure something just under her pale skin would break if I revealed the truth: that my father was having an affair with a woman who looked like a man.
By Doug CrandellAugust 2004I have many memories of my grandmother, and I hate them all: Sleepovers at her house with my cousins. Trips to Sunset Beach. The sickroom smell of Kool menthols. Vodka bottles in the toilet tank. My father’s old board games in the closet. A worn, overstuffed recliner that had belonged to my grandfather.
By Ron CurrieJuly 2004A cottage on a lake, Little League, a gray-and-white tract home
By Our ReadersJuly 2004Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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