Posts tagged family
Woman, Mother, Protector
Woman, Mother, Protector

A few months after my mom’s cancer diagnosis, I was having trouble inserting a tampon. I had never really used them, since I was still pretty young and unfamiliar with exploring that area of my body. I had gotten my period earlier than most in my grade, around the age of nine. An avid pad user at fourteen, I figured the real way to become a woman was to use a tampon. Unfortunately, when I finally mustered up the courage to try, I couldn’t figure out how to insert it in a way that wasn’t painful. I talked to my mom about it through the bathroom door, as she laid in bed after her most recent chemotherapy. The stairs had become difficult for her, and she rarely left her room. Days when I came home from school and found her on the living room couch were good days.

Yet my mom’s soft voice floated under the door: I want to help. She was crying.

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InfluenceKristina Buschfamily, mother and daughter, coming of age, cancerComment
The Risk of Change
The Risk of Change

Being a mother is difficult. I have always believed with enough unconditional love everything would turn out great for my own kids. So, when Lou, my youngest child, called and told us about their upcoming surgery, I felt honoured when they asked me to come and help them through their recovery. The long drive to Vancouver from Canmore gave me time alone to consider what was about to happen to my beloved child. That’s when the negative thoughts began to creep in about the risks of major surgery. I pushed them back, reminding myself this is Lou’s decision and I loved them enough to help them through no matter what.

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RiskJulia NusbaumLGBTQIA, transgender, familyComment
Cooking in Secret
Cooking in Secret

The first recipe I ever attempted was Baked Alaska. I was eleven.

I’m not sure how my mother conveyed that she didn’t want to teach me how to cook. It was more implied than directly stated. I understood her meaning in the same way I understood that I should not ask why, unlike my younger, fair-haired brother and sister, who looked nothing like me, I was born in a town four hours north of our home in Hanford, California.

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FeastKristina Buschfamily, cooking, Food writing Comments
The Midwestern Table
The Midwestern Table

My mother made dinner every single night. We didn’t eat out. Ever. I grew up on sixties Midwestern food, colored by my mother’s aversions and preference. She loved her meals fiercely, but anything could be ruined by a bite of shell, bone, or gristle. No one likes biting down on whatever reminds us of our protein’s genesis, but for Mom it ground the meal to a halt. She preferred everything as processed as possible.

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FeastKristina Buschfamily, Food writing, midwest, recipes Comment
She Feeds
She Feeds

Disclaimer: When I was a kid, Hollywood had me believing that The Typical Grandmother was, among other things, soft-spoken, petite, and cute, with an old-lady name like Alice, Betty, Dottie, or Mildred—Millie for short. She played Bingo or canasta, spoke of the days when a soda cost a nickel, and baked cookies better than Betty Crocker.

Mine was not like that.

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FeastKristina Buschfamily, Food writing, growing up Comments
Drive-Through Passover
Drive-Through Passover

I don’t suffer from FOMO. Leave me alone. Leave me out. I relish the kind of quiet the breeze by the lake makes when it moves between the windchimes, a pleasing cacophony. The chimes hang from a branch on a mossy oak that stands between me and the lake. I see at lake’s edge a hammock someone left out. All winter it’s twisted back and forth on its ends of frayed rope.

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Redemption StoriesSelena Raygozafamily, trauma, holiday stories, jewish women Comment
Glass Half Full
Glass Half Full

We’re sitting in a sterile room. Cold air is streaming from above and ruffling a stapled medical resources page tacked to the wall. It’s filled with tiny, almost illegible print and endless lines of phone numbers. Its intention is to let the occupants of this claustrophobic room know that ‘help is available,’ but even with this never-ending list, I feel completely overwhelmed. Like no amount of resources can help me.

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Redemption StoriesSelena Raygozafamily, illness, cancer Comments
Oocyte Incompetence — Over, Easy
Oocyte Incompetence — Over, Easy

Would you feel differently about me if I wanted to have children?

His pause told me everything; before he could parse out, I think so? I knew. It was more telling than the way he’d wheezed, I'm excited to see you too, dread of my visit dripping from his voice. In less than a week, I was supposed to fly out for a long weekend together. We’d been dating long distance for six months and everything seemed to be going well. He mentioned via text the previous night that he’d call to explain his ‘situation’ in the morning. I’d understood his situation as ‘needing a ride to the dentist’ while I was in town; he’d just received the bad luck news of an impending root canal. I didn’t anticipate his ‘situation’ would entail phrases such as my love has plateaued and I just need to rip off the Band-Aid.

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Oil and WaterKristina BuschMotherhood, relationships, family Comments
What's Memorable
What's Memorable

My mother’s eyes registered my arrival, but without her dependable smile. The bones of her face were sharp and craggy, her nose slightly humped from a childhood fall, her eyes blue and deeply set. Tita, who cared for her, had dressed her in her brightest blouse and hung a necklace round her neck. Mom was crooked in her chair and not pretending, while a cheerful string of rainbow-colored letters on the mantle shouted happy birthday for her eighty-ninth and last.

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GriefKristina Buschfamily, grief, loss, memories Comments
Coming Back Up
Coming Back Up

“Dear Poo, I’m sorry I’m writing this in a letter, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you face to face…”

We’d been in our new house just a couple of weeks when my dad—Da—left a letter and, with it, left us. He was gone. And none of us knew what gone meant. Mom couldn’t tell me where he went or why. She called Grandma to try to decipher his note. Whatever sense they made of it wasn’t shared.

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GriefKristina Buschfamily, grief, divorceComment
Hard to Love
Hard to Love

When my ex-husband told me his father was dead, he said it casually. The way you'd mention an alma mater, or that you'd lived abroad for a while.

"My dad died five years ago," he said. We were at work, in a courtroom with no privacy, dressed in our lawyer suits. He reached down to tug up his socks when he said it. I remember searching for significance in how he announced his tragedy while adjusting his outfit. It made me wonder if his father's death was an easy thing to bear. Or if it were so painful he needed to reveal it in the bright bustle of a courtroom, with busied hands. He usually seemed so guarded.

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GriefKristina Buschdeath, family, grief Comment
Trespasser
Trespasser

When I realized that I probably shouldn’t be there, at your funeral, it was too late to leave. I was sitting alone in the center of a cushioned pew halfway back, picking at my cuticles in my lap, too self-conscious among strangers to put my fingers to my mouth and chew. The little chapel was sparsely filled. It seemed I was one of the few who’d found out about the service, or else, perhaps no one was meant to come who had not been asked. When I arrived, I had expected a large crowd to disappear into, or perhaps an old classmate to cling to, but neither were found. I had not gotten in line, to file past where you rested. Instead, I ducked into a pew and sat down, to hide, to gather my thoughts, wonder if I should leave or stay, try to shake off the feeling of a spotlight on my back. Being there felt like some kind of transgression, though I only meant to pay respects.

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GriefKristina BuschDeath, family, relationships Comment
Not Your Mother's Meatloaf
Not Your Mother's Meatloaf

Tucked between the food-stained pages of my old Betty Crocker cookbook is a handwritten recipe for meatloaf. It’s written on the back of a menu from Gustaf Anders, the Swedish restaurant in Southern California where my stepbrother, John, once waited tables. It was 1992, I think, and John and his Norwegian wife were in the middle of a divorce. Or maybe it had already happened. We were drinking a lot and smoking weed in those days. We had flown back from Norway together, drunk for the entire fourteen hour flight from Oslo to Los Angeles, with a stopover in New York for Customs. I think it was New York; I was in a brownout then. The valium and booze had performed their customary magic. What I remember: putrid green cinderblock walls and men in uniforms. Our bags were screened and some item was questioned and we almost missed the connecting flight. We reeked of Marlboros and sweat and Kahlua. We’d drunk the liquor cart dry.

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FeastJulia Nusbaummother and daughter, family, Childhood, Cooking, Food writing Comment
On a Train to Nice
On a Train to Nice

I rush to the quai in the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Flinging my small case on the train, I jump on. Moments later the train pulls away along the track, heading to Nice.

Slumped in my seat, I can relax, breathe, and observe those already settled in my compartment. Business people, couples, and single travellers surround me. One small figure catches my eye—a lady in her early sixties, dressed in a double-breasted camel hair coat, green beret, and smart brown leather gloves. She is elegant, with red lipstick. The slight nervousness of her fidgeting hands is familiar.

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Second ChancesKristina Buschgrief, Mother daughter, family, immigration storiesComment
An Uprooting
An Uprooting

“Did she really say that?” I was shocked, yet I wasn’t. There was a strange quality to my awareness those days, like the water coming to shore and retreating again. I was listening to myself through insubstantial headphones, muted and tilted slightly.

My mama nodded. She kept tinkering about the kitchen, pressing the button on the coffee machine and side-stepping back to the sink. I watched her in silence for long moments, dangling my feet from the bar stool with the nervous energy that took hold of me while I was mulling over my grandmother’s statement.

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Thanks I GuessKristina Buschfamily, grief, loss Comments