A Blurry, Boozy Mess

“Should I go get him and bring him back?” I asked the group assembled around my sister’s patio table in her backyard. We were days into my trip to Michigan and it had been a mostly tense experience.  The kids were having a blast being all together, but my sister and my brother were trading [...]

The Road Paved With Envy

“What are the kids doing upstairs?”  I asked my sister as she settled on the sofa next to me. “Does it matter?  They’re quiet and not bugging us.”  She laughed and handed me a glass of iced tea to sip on while we watched television. It was Spring Break and my sister had piled her [...]

Far Away Thanks

“Here you go,” R said, handing me the steaming mug of coffee.  I was sitting on the sofa in R’s apartment watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  Z huddled under the blanket on the loveseat next to us. “Thanks,” I said, looking up at him as he sat down next to me.  “Do you know, [...]

Wedding

Things I Remember About My Wedding Day, 12/96: I loved my hair, although with my roots my hair looked brown in all of the photos I wish someone had told me about eyebrow waxing No one was paying attention to my sister’s kids while we got ready upstairs, so her daughter never ate that day.  [...]

The Notebook

“Now where is that damn notebook?”  I muttered to myself, frustrated. I was in what had been serving as Dawn and her children’s bedroom, formerly Zach’s bedroom.  She’d been with me for the better part of a month, and my nerves were starting to fray.  I’d been happy to welcome her and her two children [...]

Houseguests

“Of course you can come over,” I told Dawn on the phone.  “I’ll set up the Pack and Play in Zach’s room and put him in his old bedroom.   You and A can sleep together in the bed, it won’t be any problem.  I’ll see you in a few minutes.” I glanced at the phone [...]

Sixteen Versus Thirty Eight

“I can’t believe that’s all the kids you have in your classroom.”  I was standing in jaw dropping awe at my cousin’s classroom just outside of Washington D.C., in Virginia. After visiting the beach with my father’s family, I drove two hours south to visit my mother’s cousin in Virginia.  Amazingly, she was just finishing [...]

The Next Generation

I was sitting on a beach looking at the Atlantic Ocean.  My cousin was sitting next to me, slathering on sunblock.  Her two sons, a year older and a year younger than mine, were playing at the edge of the water with Z. This was the first summer that I wasn’t going to be working [...]

Gone

February 13, 1993 My mother shifted under the blankets we had wrapped around her lap and shoulders, a sign that the morphine was wearing off and that she was coming out of that drug induced haze that gave her the only relief from her struggle for air.  I looked over to my sister, who picked [...]

The Will To Live

The look on Paul’s face said everything that I knew but had not allowed myself to think about over the last three days. Paul, the husband of my friend Jewel, was standing at my front door.  It was Friday evening, the darkness spreading early in the cold February night.  My house was loud and bright; [...]