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I am now at an age where I have watched people grow old. They look older, maybe more feeble, their bodies thickening, their bones feeling more frail or their bodies a little stooped, their faces worried in a way I have always associated with older people. I see my friends looking more and more like my aunts and uncles did when I was a child. This is the first generation I have seen grow old. And it is a shock.
By Robert RothOctober 1991My grandmother has told me the story so often, I vividly recall the milk house although I have never been there. It is built of gray stone gathered from the fields and held together with chalky mortar. A patch of moss by the door looks like a velvet pincushion. Inside: a cream separator, the churn, gleaming tin pails, and butter paddles, their wood frayed from years of use. I see them through her eyes as she recites them like the rosary, like a charm.
By Kay Marie PorterfieldOctober 1991New neighbors, the sack of Rome, a treehouse in the Cascade Mountains
By Our ReadersAugust 1991For a long time the whole idea of God is bewildering to a little girl, but in a dreamy and faraway fashion, you know him. Like the moon and the stars across the night’s long distance, you love and fear him.
By Dana BranscumAugust 1991My keeper hurled me into the hole, and jumped in after me. She pulled the floorboards back into place, over our heads, and we were engulfed in darkness as the hammering against the front door started. I tried to call out, but her thick arm snaked around my chest, and her calloused palm clamped over my mouth, as the sound of wood splintering, and then crashing, exploded all around us.
By Earl PikeJuly 1991Killing God; discovering orgasms; feeling connected by a giant, invisible web linking all things
By Our ReadersJuly 1991A Swiss boarding school, a twig from a licorice plant, a chocolatier
By Our ReadersJune 1991It bothers me to age; I won’t deny that. I am bothered by what time does to my notions of invincibility. I am not bothered by the inability to remember — but by the inability to forget.
By Ignacio SchwartzMay 1991Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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