I once cheated a blind woman out of $125. She was a law student then, and I, an English MA.
My teaching assistant stipend amounted to $484 a month. My monthly rent totaled $125 including steam heat and water. Electricity …
It was the late 1940s in Elmhurst, Queens. Our neighborhood was all-white, although a moderate walk from 55th Road would reveal one or more black families living on a hill with a nickname I cannot write all these years later. …
Until age six, every Saturday, I went to work with my mother. Upon arrival, Mom began work on the adding machine and I was dispatched to walk one block to the Italian bakery where I would exchange a one-dollar bill …
The fluttering in her chest began as she entered the destination address into her phone. There was no pain but a distinct uneasy feeling that spread to her diaphragm and transformed into a mass of swirling butterflies. …
I hadn’t found a place to live yet, and was crashing on someone’s couch. Staying up all night to tour the city was a welcome change from feeling almost homeless and certainly rootless. Late night, there are no lines to …
When my son-in-law, Taylor, described how his children’s varied personalities were demonstrated on a recent hike, I began to wonder at what age career paths could be determined. Will Hannah, age five, who wanted to organize the play and tell …
At 6 p.m., arrivals march through my door. A trumpet dangles from Hal’s shoulder; a wooden recorder balances in Jo’s palm; wind chimes swing from Sandy’s wrist. My adult daughter Elizabeth whispers in my ear. “Mom, I don’t know anybody …
I decided that one day I would get up, liberated not just from cancer, but by cancer. I would live out the best possible outcome from this nightmare, and there would only be fantasies made real, only things ticked off …
Unemployed.
The word itself is a vacuum, having stolen the last shreds of my identity. At the same time, it was my choice to add this new title to my name.
I didn’t want to wear that label for long, …
When I was a child, the church was a holy place. God was real and we worshipped him because he was great. It wasn’t until I was older that I got the notion that religion did more harm than good. …