Here are all the pieces published on this site:
The Egg Game
When my son Caleb was a little boy, he loved to play the Egg Game. I’m not sure which one of us invented it - most likely it was one of those games that evolved over time, with input from both of us, until it took its final form. All I know is that, as...
Toys
My husband wants to buy a new car. Our Prius is ten years old and we’re tired of its stiff, noisy ride. Plus, its notorious blind spot is becoming more and more of an issue for us as we age. We don’t feel safe any more passing on the highway - cars seem to come...
Monopoly
“OK, Chief, it’s your turn,” my father says. He hands me the dice with a flourish. He’s sitting across from me at the kitchen table with a big grin on his face. My mother is upstairs nursing the baby. The rest of my siblings are in the next room, watching TV. My mother calls this...
Babysitting
The first time I babysit for my siblings, I’m twelve years old. I’m a little nervous because there are five of them now that my newest brother, Dana, has arrived. But my mother nurses him to sleep before she leaves and assures me he will stay asleep until well after she gets home. She and...
After School
When I come home from school, the first thing I do is look for my mother. She’s often at her sewing machine. When I say, “Hi, Mom!” she turns off the machine, takes off her glasses, and smiles at me: “Hi, Honey!” Baby Tricia is napping upstairs and Rory, our toddler, is sitting in the...
Yardstick
I’m reading in my bedroom when I’m startled by a loud slapping sound coming from the kitchen. I know what it is - it’s my mother smacking the kitchen counter with her yardstick. The sound means my mother is furious. She never hits any of us with the yardstick, but the noise it makes...
Tomatoes
It’s a late afternoon in late August. I’ve tied one of the garden hoses to the back of an old wooden chair. Its spray makes a puddle in the short grass. My brothers and sisters, three in their bathing suits, two in their underpants, shriek as they dash through the shower. I stand in the...
Commencement
We’re sitting on folding chairs in the middle of a field, along with several hundred other people. The chairs are grouped in sets of mostly two or three, to create socially-distanced “pandemic pods.” In front of us is a stage with a podium and a microphone. To each side of the stage is a large...
Tom and Cyndy
Thomas is a small boy who wears glasses with thick lenses to correct his astigmatism, has a concave chest, is “book” smart, and plays the piano. It’s a challenging combination for a boy growing up in a working class neighborhood in Massachusetts in the 1940s and 50s. Sometimes the other boys pick on him. Sometimes...
Clan MacKenzie
A wooden sign made by my mother hangs on the front of our house. It features our house number, a plaid tam-o-shanter, and these words: Clan MacKenzie. We live in an old Catholic rectory. We aren’t Catholic ourselves, although many people in town assume we are. That’s because there are six of us kids -...
Waiting
I’m in a tunnel, a tunnel that narrows and narrows until there’s no going back, no room, in fact, to even turn around. I can only go forward, toward a small circle of light and silence, where the tunnel starts to widen, to open out into the larger world again. You’re also in a narrow...
1 – Meaningless
I’m home from college for a weekend and come in late after spending a Saturday night with old high school friends. I don’t want to wake anyone up, so I try to be as quiet as I can as I unlock the front door and let myself in. I’m startled by the sounds of someone...
2 – Vanishing
I’m sitting on one of the window seats in my parents’ bedroom. My mother has yet another headache and is lying in bed. She spends a lot of time in bed or on the couch. Her headaches are upsetting. I can’t talk to her when she has one. If I try to, she won’t respond...
3 – Hospital Visit
My father calls on a Friday afternoon in early September: “Mom’s in the hospital again. You need to come home and visit her.” “Dad, I can’t. I finally found a job and my first day is tomorrow.” I graduated from college in the spring and it has taken me most of the summer to find...
Scrambled Eggs
“Hannah, what would you like for lunch today?” I ask my three year old daughter. “Eggie! Eggie!” she shouts. Hannah loves scrambled eggs. “Okey dokey.” I get out the ingredients and start cooking the eggs, while Hannah sits at her little plastic table and draws people on pieces of blank newsprint. They have round heads...
Sensitivity
I walk into my four year old son’s room and say, “Good morning, Caleb!” I try to sound cheerful and relaxed, but I’m feeling worried and tense -- when will the fighting begin today? I put up one of his shades and he starts to scream. “Don’t put up my shades!” “But Honey, it’s morning....
4 – Waiting
The house in Hadley is an old, rundown, one-story farmhouse surrounded by tobacco fields. Every room except the kitchen and the living room has been turned into a bedroom and rented out. My room is a sort of alcove, a place where the hall bulges out into a lump on the face of the house....
5 – Underpants
One of the local supervisors, Lorraine, has invited all of the VISTA volunteers to a party at her place. My roommate Rachel really wants to get high, but can’t afford to buy any weed. I really want something else. So she and I decide to go to the party. We bum a ride with two...
Umbilical Cord
Nights I lie awake, patient, loving,
your kicks a need in you
for movement, separateness;
your kicks a need in you
for movement, separateness;
6 – Bad Guys
I’m visiting my parents with my husband, Benson, and my two children, Hannah and Caleb. Hannah is seven and Caleb is four and a half. Caleb is at the age where many children become very focused on good guys and bad guys. My parents are Christian, at least by background, if no longer by belief,...
Big Puzzle
It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon in early August. My two older children, Hannah and Caleb, are at sleep away camp. My husband is in his study, getting ready to leave on a business trip. I’ve just finished making a jigsaw puzzle with my youngest, Rutie, who’s six. It’s a hot, humid day and she looks...
A Response to The Giving Tree *
A mere stump, I waited patiently by the forest’s edge. When the man came by, I offered him a place to sit. When he was rested, he went on his way. After much hesitation, I grew a trunk. The man was angry. “I have no place to rest,” he said. “Climb to the top of...
Brown Dog
I'm running late. I'm always running late. I used to be a punctual person and I still want to be a punctual person. But with three children, it's impossible. "No, it's not," I argue with myself. "The problem is that you always make the wrong choice. You always decide to do one more thing instead...
Happy Children
It's the middle of a summer morning and I'm watering my houseplants. I've sent my two miserable, quarreling children to the third floor playroom. Part of me is listening for the next fight to break out. Part of me is so tired of listening that I'm ready to leave them to their own devices until...
Last Dance Class
It's the last day of the "Mommy and Me" dance class I've been taking with my almost-three year old daughter, Rutie. As we file out of the classroom and into the dressing room, the other moms call out to the teacher: “Happy Holiday, Miss Madeleine!” “See you next session!” “Thank you, Miss Madeleine!” I’d like...
Report Card
“How’d you do?” my friend Josie whispers. “Good!” I whisper back. Our fourth grade teacher, Miss Morgan, has just handed out our report cards for the first quarter. We have to take them home and have our parents sign them. They’re in small manilla envelopes with four signature lines on the outside, one for each...
I Think I Can
“Mom and I are going to a meeting at the church tomorrow night,” my father tells me. “Betsy Flood is coming to babysit.” “What about Girl Scouts?” I ask. “We can drop you off on our way to the meeting, but you’ll have to find your own ride home. Our meeting won’t be over until...
My Father in the Snow
He takes me on the train (just me! the city!), his annual trip to buy new music. In the twilit lottwo miles from home, our car will not start as heavy snow falls. No pay phone to call a taxi ormy mother (making supper for siblings, no car anyway). My father considers, decides we’llwalk, I’m...
Baby Eyes
I hold my newborn daughter in my arms. All the noise and effort of labor fades away. We’re alone in the quiet and the soft light. I gaze into her eyes, which are such a deep navy blue that they seem almost black. Looking into them is like looking through windows into time itself: “like...
Pain
Pain kicks me – hard – in the back, then pushes me onto the bed. It threatens to hurt me more if I don’t lie still. So I try to do what pain demands, while it invades my body and assaults my mind. I can’t do anything to make it stop. Struggling with pain only...
Opening My Heart
My father has deteriorated quite a bit in the six months that have passed since the last time my husband, Benson, and I visited my parents. The Lewy Body dementia he suffers from is taking its terrible, inevitable toll. Never a large man, my father has become painfully thin. He doesn’t eat much any more....
Wake/Funeral
As I walk into the room where my father’s wake is being held, I’m terrified that I won’t cry. We spent so many years being angry with each other - what if I don’t feel anything but relief that he’s gone? But as soon as I take my mother in my arms, the tears come...
1 – Notes
Dad, Since you passed away, I’ve been reading and rereading all of your old notes and letters. I’ve found myself wanting to write back to you, as I used to, even though you’re gone. When I was a child, you were always writing something. You wrote stories about life with six kids and sent them...
2 – Big Ideas
Dad, Do you remember the long car rides we used to take coming home from visiting the grandparents? You had gotten your new job at GenRad and we had moved from Weymouth, where you and Mom grew up, out to Acton, where I did most of my growing up. For the first few years, we...
3 – Applications
Dad, I’m still trying to understand what happened when the time came for me to apply to college. Throughout high school, my class ranking was always in the top five. By my senior year, I was ranked second. My teachers and my guidance counselor assumed I’d go to college. But none of them explained the...
Pandemic Hike
On the Saturday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, my husband Benson and I drive about an hour outside of our city to a large nature preserve. We take a long beautiful hike through the woods to a beaver lake, then on to a river, and then back. We emerge at the parking lot where we left...
4 – College
Dad, You wrote to me frequently when I was in college. You updated me on what you and my siblings were doing and sometimes gave me news about Mom, although her situation never seemed to change much. I told you about my classes and a bit about my social life. I didn’t mention my drinking...
5 – Walls
Dad, For years after I graduated from college, you and I talked about walls. I kept saying that Mom had built a wall between herself and me, and since she was the one who had built it, she was the one who would have to take it down. You kept saying that, if there was...
6 – The Sparkles of Life *
Dad, I just finished rereading Sparkles for the first time in decades and find myself thinking about your reasons for writing it. The obvious one was your strong belief that Mom had MCS, not a mental illness, and your desire to “prove” this. You were full of rage at the medical establishment, which you believed...
7 – Drifting Negative
Dad, After Mom started to feel better and the two of you moved to Florida, you and I tried so hard to end our estrangement. But we never really succeeded. We’d have a talk or exchange some letters, and we’d feel like we’d really understood each other and forgiven each other and gotten closer. But...
Express Lane
I’m standing in the “Twelve Items or Less” line at Stop and Shop. I’m buying a jar of pasta sauce for tonight’s dinner and a quarter of a pound of sliced turkey for my daughter’s lunch tomorrow. I watch the man in front of me pay his bill. The cashier hands him his change and...
8 – Mom and Me
Dad, In the letters you wrote me in the early years of my adulthood, you often accused me of relating to Mom as a child. You felt that I blamed her for all of my problems and wanted her to take care of me as if I was still a little girl. And you were...
9 – Mom and Me Update
Dad, This letter is going to be longer than the previous ones and probably pretty upsetting for you, but I hope you will read it all the way to the end. In the last years before your dementia took hold, you sometimes expressed your feelings of hopelessness about Mom and me. You didn’t see how...
10 – Locks
Dad, I think this will be my last letter to you. I don’t know where you are now, but I’m hoping that, somehow, my words have been finding their way to you. A few years ago, Benson and I moved to Seattle because he got a job at Google. He’d been unhappy at Basis for...
Letter to My Writing, 1997
Dear Writing, Running into you last night was wonderful. I could hardly believe we were together again. It felt just like old times. But this morning I woke up feeling exhausted and frightened. Writing, what are you doing here? Why have you come back into my life? You know I don’t want you here --...
Letter to My Writing, 2021
Dear Writing, It probably seems strange to you that I’m writing you a letter, since we spend time together almost every day. But there are things I want to tell you, and sometimes I find that I can share my thoughts more clearly in a letter than in a face to face conversation. It was...
Physical Education, 1969
The first day of gym, freshman year, we line up to be weighed. Ahead of me, most of the girls are the size of my mother, already young women, breasts and hips straining the uniforms: one-piece contraptions with short legs, short sleeves, snaps up the front, and Peter Pan collars, made of bright red unyielding...
Photograph
It sits on my dresser: an eight by ten in a pretty gold frame, a daily reminder of how it began. Here is myself: a months old baby in my mother’s lap, facing forward, arms waving, a fancy white dress with short puff sleeves, scrawny legs, little white booties. Here is my mother: just eighteen,...
1 – Conversation with a Possible First Child
K: Hello? I know you’re in me somewhere, or at least, the possibility of you is in me. I need to explain myself. PFC: OK, I’m listening. K: I can’t become your mother because I know I can’t do it by myself and right now there’s no one in my life who would help me....
2 – Second Time
Like a high temperature’s nightmareThat repeats itself with every fever,This moment owns me again:Flat on my back,Feet in stirrups, A johnny pushed up to my waist. Pain is here, a small machineDesigned to be efficient.Crouched in the cornerLike a ready Hoover,It will clean up the mess I’ve made.Again. Ruth stands near me,A volunteer assigned to me:Strong...
3 – Yizkor
It’s Yom Kippur afternoon. Benson and I are attending services at Havurat Shalom, the alternative Jewish community to which we belong. The services are held in a large old house that the community owns in Somerville, MA. It’s a beautiful fall day and sunlight streams through the windows. But we are somber. Yizkor is a...
School Clothes, 1967
We went to Sears, to the Lemon Frog,the new department for teens and preteens.Just my mother and me,the Sears charge card deep in her wallet.Seventh grade would start soon,Junior High School,a big step. For the first time I would have new,store-bought clothes for school.Not my cousin Pammy’s hand-me-downs,or stuff from the last church rummage sale,or...
4 – To A Possible Third Child
You would be Ruth, I think,named for my Nana,a flapper in her youthwith a twin named Rubyand lungs blackened by decades of smoke. Or perhaps you would be Ruthfor the blue-eyed womanwho said, "Breathe, breathe!"and held my hand,as I said "No" to a child,but wished I could say “Yes.” I've thought of you so often,you’re like...
5 – Choice
I’m at my pediatricians’ office with my teenage daughter, Hannah. She’s having her annual physical. The receptionist hands me a clipboard, with some paperwork attached. “Sorry to make you do this,” she says, “but we’ve just started using a new computer system and we need everyone to fill out these forms. I know we already...
The House of Love
for Hannah and Charles on their wedding You opened the door,you took a deep breath,you crossed the threshold.Today, another breath,another threshold.You close the door,making your choice:this life, not that one,here, not there. In the house of love,there is a bed, of course,but perhaps more important,there is a table. Some daysyou will sit across from one...
The Girl in the Pink Dress
In memory of Karyme The bullet was sleek, copper-colored,when he loaded it into the gun.Once in her head, it blossomedinto a fatal flower with jagged petalsand a sulfurous fragrance,while its casing fell to the ground. She fell too, by the side of the path,gagging as the vomit filled her throatand dribbled into her glossy hair,now...
Fallen Oak Leaf
It lands on my mailbox,A different sort of post,An early warningOf a coming due date.This severed hand,With fingers curlingIn toward its palm,Could make a fistPrepared to strike,A quiet threat I brush away. Hastening up my long front walk,My autumn lawn surrounds me,Its still-green lifeLittered with such hands,Signs of decay,Discarded pawsThat shrivel, darken,Crumble into bits,Vanish into...
Ocean (an imagined memory)
We take the bus, from Quincy Center all the way out to Nantasket. I'm fifteen months old, still a toddler. My mother is nineteen years old, still a teenager. When we arrive at the beach, my mother undresses me down to my bathing suit, then busies herself spreading out the blanket, unpacking the towels and...
Ocean Storm
My pregnant mother turns eighteenWhile I, serene, float within her.After birth, she still surrounds me,A peaceful sea holding me up,Where I safely swim, no fear of falling.My ending, her beginning: indeterminate. When the storm comes, the terrible illness,My oceanic mother gathers herself,Withdrawing deeply away from pain,Then crashes forth with swells of emotion.I’m tossed about, a...
Organ Practice
My father appears in the doorway of my bedroom: “Hey Chief, how’s the homework going?” “All done, Dad.” “Wanna help me practice?” “Sure!” One night a week, my father goes down to our church, South Acton Congregational, to practice the organ. He has his own key. It looks like an ordinary house key, but I...
My Father’s Musical Legacy
My father and I had a complicated relationship with music and each other when I was growing up. He gave me my love of music, for which I’m grateful. But he also gave me my fear of performing in front of others. Worse, his impatient and negative criticism of my attempts to make music eventually...
The History of My Hair
One of the strange things about getting older (I’m sixty-five) is that you start to lose your body hair. I have very little hair on my legs now, although I still shave them once a week to get rid of the outliers. And I have so little hair under my arms that I can go...