One of my earliest childhood memories finds me nestled in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon with my brothers and sister, crocheted afghans pulled to our necks, eyes fixed on the ceiling of the car, and little padding for our backs. Above us, centered in the beam cast from streetlights and traveling cars, our hand-shadow puppets danced across a stage until the […]
Books and Memories
Books and memories…for me they go together in a way that elicits feelings of love. When I look back as far as my mind’s eye will take me, I can’t see a period of time that didn’t include books. According to my mother, my first favorite was Pat the Bunny. Mom had a story, which by all appearances was […]
Home is My Church
Reflection: something that shows the effect, existence, or character of something else.”–Merriam Webster Dictionary By the time I was born, my family had all but given up church. My memories of going are more like snapshots, the first of which is of leaving. It was winter in Connecticut. I was probably three years old and […]
The First Time I Was Raped
The first time I was raped was in the back seat of a car. I was 16. In those days the legal age to drink was 18, and underage drinking mostly went unnoticed. It was pretty typical for all of us kids to first hit the Connecticut bars, then, once they closed, head to either Port Chester or Purchase — state line […]
Home
When I think of home–I don’t think as much about place–as I do about feel. What does being at home in my mind feel like? For me it boils down to two things, safety and love. Even though I have had times in my life where I was not at home with myself, or safe, […]
The Sort of Grandmother
My minds hand tugs at the line between now and then, one hand feeds the other and I watch as the past moves into view. It was a rainy autumn day. Even now I can feel the fluttering beat of my heart as it kept time with the windshield wipers. The road ahead –like me– disappearing, reappearing with the pass of […]
Phone Calls
It stems back to a different phone call. The phone call where I learned Jimmy’s mom had been killed in a car accident in a car that had made it’s own somersault launch from the freeway. We know it happens. We lived it. That is a phone call I never ever want to get again.
