MERYL

Meryl had sat behind me in Mr. Anderson’s homeroom all three years of high school, and our junior year we'd chattered like “loros”—“parrots,” as our teacher Mr. Lorenzo called us—in Spanish class. In December of our senior year I wrote: Meryl and I went tromping...

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BRITTE

BRITTE

My senior year in Spanish class we had a student teacher I’ll call Britte. She was pretty, tall, blond, and big-boned—Juno-esque. She took an interest in me and my friend Alice as the best students in the class and invited us to a charreada a, Mexican rodeo. I developed…

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ARLEN

It’s time, I realize—long past time, really—to introduce Arlen, another major player in my life: I first met her when I arrived home from high school one afternoon and found her standing on a chair in the kitchen, reorganizing all my mother’s cupboards. She was in the...

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NUDGE

NUDGE

In the bus after the concert, my friend Ginny and I happened to be sitting near Mr. Pearson. In a dreamy mood, I was gazing out at the hills, which looked silvery in the moonlight. When he asked us how we’d liked the concert, Ginny answered, but I didn’t. I didn’t...

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AMEN!

AMEN!

As I’ve said, my dream, from the time I was twelve years old, was to become a singer. In the dining room of the Doswell house in St. Anthony Park, there was an old upright piano that I’d started to play…but gave up before long, convinced that it was too late for me to...

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BOX BABY

BOX BABY

Though I had this dream—included in A Patchwork Memoir—when I was an adult, I’m posting it out of order because I think it illuminates my earlier state of mind:

I keep turning up variously-colored “Dream” file folders from different…

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