CONVERSION BLUES
I never know when I’m driving back from the pool what surprises await me at home: a port-a-potty situated directly in front of my bedroom window, so when I open any window, the smell wafts in; a large hole punched through the kitchen wall…
LUNA MOTH
I’ve been remiss. I’d promised myself to post at least one blog a week, but I haven’t because I’ve been traveling recently. It all started with searching online for the most beautiful image of a luna moth I could find—an impulse prompted, I suspect, by my latest blogs...
APTNESS
Another major player in my life is my therapist Annee (pronounced Annay—with the accent on the second syllable). Luckily for me, she has a sliding scale. In A Patchwork Memoir, I wrote:
Annee is in her forties, slim, girlish, and pretty in a natural way; she doesn’t wear makeup because she’s allergic to it and has a cloud of brown hair that she recently admitted she has to set, it’s so kinky. She wears midi-length, softly gathered skirts with matching tops in pastel colors—and sandals—except on Fridays, when…
MIRROR IMAGE
I don’t have many pictures of my dad and me together. (And contrary to what my computer thinks, “me” is correct because it’s the object of a preposition, a rule that nobody seems to remember anymore.) There we both are with our eyes closed, holding our drinks, legs sprawling…
FATALITY
Margret also sent me, carefully packed in styrofoam peanuts and sealed in plastic bags, the christening gown my grandmother Marie made my father before his birth and the Bible my grandfather Frank gave her when she converted to Catholicism. Frank was a chemical...
JOLTED
From A Patchwork Memoir: I have eight photos of my beautiful Swedish grand-
mother Marie, my father’s mother. In my favorite, she’s sitting cross-legged in a field, bundled in a light jacket, her long skirt wrapped around her feet.