Crowning Glory
Crowning Glory

My father was a career military man and did three tours overseas. Each time he returned home from deployments his skill at attacking others in darkness was sharper and keener. He drank heavily and became easily enraged, used the skills he had mastered to be quick and precise when striking out at the object of his ire. The only daughter in the family, I was not spared the violence inflicted upon my four brothers. My father did not discriminate in his lashing out. My disadvantage was the possession of gloriously long dark hair that both parents insisted I grow.

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Coming of AgeGuest Userabuse, parents, childhood, coming of age Comments
Cleaning God’s House
Cleaning God’s House

I grew up in the exalted spaces of a United Methodist Church. Dad was a pastor who, after graduating from seminary in Ohio, drove with my mother across the country to the far west of Washington, with six-month-old me strapped into a bassinet behind the front seat. In the early days of memory, I enjoyed singing hymns, drinking grape juice from thimble cups at communion, and helping Mom entertain parishioners in groups according to their last names for lunches in our home, where she served vegetable soup and black bottom cupcakes until she’d run through all the letters of the alphabet.

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Coming of AgeGuest Usercoming of age, Religion, childhood Comment
Skinny Dipping with a Mermaid
Skinny Dipping with a Mermaid

It took me awhile growing up in the turbulent 1960’s and 70’s to claim my feminist inheritance. In fact, the sexual revolution might have passed me up all together had it not been for fate. Beyond any conscious choice, fate shifted some of my inherited puritan ethos to a more playful appreciation of my body. It was my friend Lara, the one who is part-woman, part-mermaid, who played the critical role of ushering in this small but momentous shift.

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Twist of FateJulia Nusbaummermaids, growing up, Girlhood Comment
Fate Knocking at the Door!
Fate Knocking at the Door!

August 1973. I had graduated from high school two months earlier and was in Potamia, my hometown in Cyprus, for the summer. Life in Potamia was hard and uncomfortable, and I had never really liked being there. My father was a farmer, and my parents had to work long hours every day on our farm to make ends meet. When we were in Potamia, my brothers and sisters worked at the farm as well. For most of the year, we, the eldest three of the five siblings, attended secondary school in Nicosia (the capital of Cyprus), where we lived with our grandparents.

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Twist of FateGuest Usergirlhood, childhood, School, travel, EducationComment
Lost and Found
Lost and Found

A summer camp in the Allegheny Mountains is where I lost the plan for my future. Given the early 1960s, one would have thought a loss of virginity the big event of the season, but that dropped away as casually as dandelion fluff in the wind. My lost plan was a casualty of my lost religion. I had planned a career in the church, in one of the limited options then offered to women. I entered camp as a Presbyterian and emerged as an unbeliever.

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Twist of FateGuest UserReligion, summer, childhoodComment
The Unfinished Agenda
The Unfinished Agenda

He made his way around the seminar table to stand at the podium and present the paper reflecting his semester-long wrestling match with challenges to everything he had been raised to accept without questioning. “He” is a young white man – a law student – who looked as if plucked from Hollywood Central Casting for a crowd scene of stereotypic “Bubbas” attending a rally of the Ku Klux Klan.

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Women Who TeachJulia NusbaumTeachers, Women teachers, Women who teach, Teaching, Feminist, Black women, LGBTQIA, Civil RightsComment
To Courtney, With Love
To Courtney, With Love

The new English teacher—the fourth one in less than three years—looked like a punky Tinkerbell.

She wore her starlight blonde hair pulled into a bun, big oversized glasses perched on her upturned nose (the kind of cute nose I always wished I had) with a dainty twinkling stud. Despite her scarf, a tattooed comet of Fall Out Boy lyrics flowed across her shoulder with a spray of falling stars.

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Women Who TeachGuest Userteacher, student, gratitude, friendship Comment
The Poet
The Poet

One of my students, a poet, works at a gas station by night. I picture her under the fluorescent lights, composing sonnets and slam poems (her favorite), reading them aloud to the empty store in rural New Mexico, where only a few cars pass by. When the door chime rings, she stows her notebook under the counter and straightens the array of potato chips next to the cash register.

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Women Who TeachGuest Userteacher, student, Working womenComment
V & S Go West
V & S Go West

When we tell Clarence that I need to drive my car from New York to Los Angeles, the first thing he says is, you can have the time off. She can’t. He is, of course, pointing at S, not knowing we’ve stayed up the night before planning a 12-day, 10-city cross country road trip. We’ve planned this trip down to a T, but what we haven’t factored in is our boss not being on board.

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Traveling WomenJulia Nusbaumtraveling women, roadtripComment
Expat Doom
Expat Doom

Two years into teaching English in Barcelona I have this feeling of doom. It’s a hollowness in my stomach, a black hole sucking everything in. It's too late to leave but too late to stay. Time grinds to a halt. I no longer understand anything; at the event horizon, the rules no longer apply. We fly back from a short summer vacation in Prague and the plane circles the city, round and round, waiting to land, and I look down and I recognize every landmark, and I see all of my neighborhoods, and can only think, why? Why come back? I don't belong here.

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Traveling WomenJulia Nusbaumexpat, feminism, TravelingComment
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving

The airplane skims over a monotonously beautiful carpet of lakes, clouds, forest, and fields. The Land of Midnight Sun (well, actually, one out of five possible Lands of Midnight Sun; each Nordic nation with its twenty-four hours of summer daylight technically qualified to claim the title) reveals itself to you in puffs of white, geometries of emerald, bowls of aqua. It’s only a matter of minutes before you land and have to start apologizing.

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Traveling WomenGuest UserTravel, traveling women, black women, familyComment
Caution: Memories in the Mirror May Be Closer than They Appear
Caution: Memories in the Mirror May Be Closer than They Appear

The road unfolds in front of us, a black ribbon of tarmac glittering in the summer heat. It is one of many roads I have taken. The rearview mirror reflects the same view, a yellow dotted line that connects us to the next destination, and the previous. Were we ever there? Over a hill, the road disappears, and I wonder if we too will disappear as we follow it.

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Traveling WomenGuest Usertravel, traveling women, mother, driving Comment
Dear Sarina
Dear Sarina

I remember being you. Being you, with your hands tucked under your thighs in skinny jeans that never quite fell to the ankle. I remember those hands, & how they wanted to wander over into his & how you told him with your lips that you would always wonder what it would be like to kiss him, but your lips stayed tucked together. He said he'd always feel that way too, and you let the moment pass, utterly kissless.

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Dear Past MeJulia Nusbaumrelationships, dating, womens storiesComment
Dear Oanh
Dear Oanh

Dear me from one year ago,

I regret to inform you that tomorrow will be one of the worst days of your life.

Tomorrow you will reset the password to log into your joint bank account. You asked him for the password many, many times. He always says, “Oh it’s on my phone… I don’t remember it…I will get it to you when I have time…I can’t do it right now.”

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Dear Past MeSelena Raygozadear past me, womens stories, womenComment