Category Archives: Memories
Old Poetry
When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot of poetry. Some of it was good – I won a few awards. But most of it was typical adolescent mediocrity. Life is never more unfair or more glorious than when you are seventeen. Most of it didn’t survive. I remember only orphan lines. They come …
Not Having Children
(I wrote this essay twenty years ago. I published it here for the first time six years ago. This Mother’s Day, I share it again.) *** I married when I was forty. It was amazing at that age how many people asked me if we were going to have children. No, I’d say, We’re not …
Facing Reality
My latest novel, SISTERS, SECRETS, AND THE JUNIOR PROM, is set in high school in 1969, which, by sheer coincidence, is where I happened to be in 1969. The book is fiction. Untrue. Made up. Has no basis in reality. Except, of course, like all fiction, pieces of my life weave in and out of …
My Acapulco Admirer
Ages and ages ago, when I was about twenty, I went on a bargain vacation to Mexico. A high school friend was attending college there, and she found a cheap hotel and I found a cheap airfare, and I met her over Christmas break for a week in Acapulco. I had never traveled alone before …
Losing Control
This week the carpenter came to do some repairs. The dogs did their typical thing. Theo was all over the carpenter, insisting on attention and constant petting. Henry stood four feet behind the guy, barking his silly protective head off. Which one was annoying? Both, of course. Too much love gets in the way of …
Poetry And Poverty
Louise Gluck has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I am familiar with the name. I had to re-familiarize myself with her poetry. Life moves from poetry to prose. In high school and college, Poetry saturated me. I have been searching for a better word than saturate. But that’s the one. Poetry surrounded me …
Expertise
As I was trying on outfits the other day – for God knows what reason, I have nowhere on earth to go – a sweet memory surfaced – also from God knows where. I attended a parochial grammar school, where I wore the typical Catholic school uniform. Navy jumper, white blouse, little navy bowtie. Oh …
Stuck
I have finished the first draft of my new novel. Yea for me! It is off at the editor’s and now I am stuck. Stuck between that story and whatever come next. Because I can’t quite shake that story. I’m still in there. The story is set in 1968 and the main character is a …
Not Scary
A few nights ago, I drove by a building I used to know. I’ve been by that building hundreds of times, but not at night. The darkness made all the difference. I worked there. At night. It was my first job after college. I guess it was a terrible job, but it took me six …
notquiteold 