The Monthly Theme Essays are a collection of essays written each month on a predetermined theme. These essays are always published during the last week of the month. To submit a Monthly Theme Essay check out our upcoming themes.
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Under a dripping canopy of tall oaks, I stumbled around a New Jersey cemetery scanning names engraved on headstones. I knew my father was there somewhere, but exactly where was a mystery. No one from the cemetery had returned my calls, the office was deserted, and there wasn’t a soul in sight to ask. There was nothing to do but start at one end and amble up and down the walkways that snaked through the graves.
Read MoreBy the first day of grade twelve, I can’t handle living in this shithole town anymore. Summer: a blur of house parties, handsy boys and men, and sleepless nights. I butt my cigarette against the brown brick façade, march into the guidance counsellor’s office and say, “If I can’t finish first term, I quit.” I graduate in January.
Read MoreClaremont, California, circa 2005 (or anytime between 1955 and 2008):
My father tells me my mother smiled at something he said today. To mark the occasion, I take this mental snapshot, underexposed, milky black and white. She is silhouetted against the window in front of the herb garden she has let die.
Read More“To tell or not tell?” I have been grappling with this question for years. After looking at it from all angles and analyzing the potential consequences of both options, I have finally concluded that it is best to “tell.” The question has to do with whether I disclose an important family secret, revealed to me by my mother ten years ago, or keep it to myself, which will amount to burying it for good, never to surface again.
Read MoreAs my parents’ only child, I always listened for bits of grown-up news or gossip, especially when they spoke in hushed tones or in “code.” Without siblings to distract me away from the business of the adults, I was often privy to all sorts of dirt. But, whenever I asked a question about something I overheard, my mother shamed me back to childhood with comments like, “Little pitchers have big ears!” or even better, in Italian, “Fatti gli affari tuoi!”
Read MoreFor months after my abuelita died, I slept with the covers tucked around my six-year-old face. The breeze that blew in from the Caribbean, cooling along the way as it traveled across the mountains, through the concrete city of Caracas, past the iron bars of my bedroom window, entering my mouth, my nose, my ears, felt like something my grandmother had sent from above, just for me.
Read MoreMy great-grandmother died before I was born. It never occurred to me as a child that she might be someone of note. But Mom knew she mattered, so a few years before I became a woman, and long before two small girls called me mother, she introduced her to me by telling a simple story.
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