For six years, my home has been a foster home to teenagers in foster care. During those six years, my partner has only ever wanted to care for a girl of pre-schooler age. Just one – that’s all my partner …
We found out about her death because Dad saw her obituary in the newspaper. A week or two later, her property was posted with a sign advertising the sale of the contents of her home. Dad collected antiques and anything …
Wood smoke burns my eyes despite the air flowing in the door and out the roof vents of the cinder block cookhouse. My job is to stir the copper kettle filled with pig necks, feet, hearts, and livers that will …
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 …