When I meet her, she’s leaving. An hourglass flips the second we make eye contact. This is the first reading she’s ever attended. I don’t know this yet. She looks at home leaning against the stacks in that Park Slope bookstore, wearing those almost-overalls with her arms loosely crossed. Her nails are short, their black polish chipping. She stands alone, which I like.
Read More“I’m a tax preparer now,” I said, somewhat sheepishly. Being a tax preparer isn’t exactly what anyone dreams of when considering professions, and I am probably more surprised than anyone else that those words consistently come out of my mouth now.
Read MoreIn a recurring nightmare, someone unwelcome, uninvited, and dangerous tries to break into my home. It is always daytime, a shining, exposing sun more sinister than the privacy of darkness. I lock the front door, then slide across the tile floor of the family room in socked feet to lock the back door.
Read MoreWhen Weezie came to pick me up for our road trip to the mountains, six months after her husband Emmanuel was diagnosed, she looked excited. But it felt forced, like a child who no longer believes in Santa but pretends to believe so they may feel the old tingle of anticipation. What I saw was grief.
Read MoreOn a clear late summer afternoon along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Sandbar slid off its foundation and washed into the Atlantic Ocean, the footage so dramatic, it went viral on social media and made the national news. The house was now called Dolphin’s Point, but for my friends and me, it would always be Sandbar. I thought about how the owners must have felt watching something they loved drift away from them, as they stood helpless, knowing they would never see it again.
Read MoreI asked myself, how do I get into these things? How did I find myself in the middle of a desert, with nothing but a gas station for over a hundred miles, in the searing heat toting a backpack that magically gained weight the further I went?
Read MoreIs it possible to feel the loss of something if you never had it to begin with? I don’t mean desire, because to desire something doesn’t necessarily mean a palpable sense of missing it. I mean, rather, to feel a defined and tangible absence, like that of a phantom limb, but for one never possessed in the first place.
Read MoreThe sun set an hour ago, which means it’s finally below forty degrees Celsius. Normally I embrace the dry heat in Erbil in exchange for the humidity back home in Toronto, but today it leaves my throat dry and hoarse. I shuffle my feet on the dusty tiles outside my house and peer over the metal gate until Emmita’s black SUV pulls up.
Read MoreA jarring racket fills our camper on this untamed night in the Sol Duc watershed of the Olympic National Park. Large pockets of water form on Douglas Fir limbs above, collecting, collecting, collecting until…splat, kerplunk on top of the metal-roofed truck camper. Hundreds such collection systems drop like random rocks.
Read MoreI’m sorry I couldn’t go to your wedding and that my explanation was vague and seemed rude. My doctor wouldn’t let me fly. I couldn’t find the words. I worried that mentioning pregnancy loss would cloud the conversation of your celebration.
Read MoreA woman appearing before you desperately frightened by the usual gesticulations, the kicks and rolls inside of her becoming suddenly still, by the warm trickle down her leg, fluid or blood but too soon, too soon. What if you took her by the hand and walked her to a room much like a bedroom, with bleached sheets and pillow cases, bassinet and muslin blankets, with warm light coming through a southern window but stark for its waxed floors where blood pooled at your feet just last week, now a shadow upon which you sometimes slip for the mercilessness of memory? Merciless because this isn’t the first time and, by the wickedness of fate, it will never be the last.
Read MoreI was twenty-nine. I didn’t know what to feel, or what it would feel like. That first sonogram seemed other-worldly. At every twitch I thought I was feeling the first flutters, but when they began to come with regularity, the realness set in that I was at a different stage of being a woman.
Read MoreMy friend came over and we slowly drank wine and talked—her miscarriage (a couple years earlier), my miscarriage (current), the moments that blindsided each of us in a wash of grief, what the aftermath was like for her and what getting pregnant again was like. I was smack dab in the middle of my experience and found comfort in talking to friends who had been there and who had now had time to assimilate it within a zoomed-out picture of The Rest of Life.
Read More“Nature’s the ultimate inspiration.”
The woman speaking was ageless and poised in a way that made me feel homely and naive. Her blowout looked freshly fixed, and her workout clothes looked as though she’d never actually worked out in them—a start contrast to my faded sweatpants. Her make-up was so natural I wondered if she was wearing make-up at all—but no one could look that good at 6:00 am without make-up, could they? Maybe she just had flawless skin. Maybe it is the giant jar of green juice she’s touting.
Read MoreI’m organizing my CD collection alphabetically by artist, like every Saturday. The Cranberries, Janet Jackson, La Bouche, No Doubt, Selena, the Spice Girls, and TLC are among them. I have a stack of cassettes by Michael Jackson, New Kids, UB40, and various Disney movies. A cheerful knock at my open door catches my attention. Dad stands in the doorway, holding a semi-ripe banana.
Read MoreMy desk had become a fortress of pillows, snacks, and motivational sticky notes from my colleagues that read things like “You can do it!” and “Please don’t give birth on my lunch break!” The snacks were essential, as my unborn child had developed gourmet tastes that could rival a Michelin-starred chef. Pickles dipped in Nutella? Sure. Cheese puffs with a side of strawberry jam? Why not? And my chair had been replaced with an exercise ball, supposedly to help with labor prep but mostly making me feel like a circus act.
Read MoreMy drivers license is about to expire and I am trying not to dwell on my recent decision to cut bangs. For the first time in two decades, I have to renew my license in-person. I pull into the Department of Motor Vehicles, I park my car and assemble the papers that sit on the passenger seat. I am optimistic and photo ready. I go inside and get in line. I am here, I tell the clerk at the check-in desk, to get a Real ID.
Read MoreEager to begin research for an article I am writing about being a kidney donor for my older sister in the eighties, I place a hold on two books at my neighborhood branch of the Austin Public Library. When I am notified they are in, I walk several blocks to retrieve them. Yellow tape displaying the first four letters of my surname and last four numbers of my account is affixed to three books on the Hold Shelf I did not request: Attracting Genuine Love, The Soulmate Secret, and Wired for Dating.
Read MoreI thought he was masquerading, even though it was morning and too early for a costume. In my mind, I wondered if he had dressed up the night before, if he went to a costume party where he decided to don the clothes of a cowboy. The bandana looked like he recently pulled it from being wrapped around his neck to cover his nose and mouth, to make him only partially recognizable. It was the early eighties after all, and Village People costumes, the policeman, the construction worker, and the cowboy were still the rage. The thought of this made me want to laugh, to think that this guy hadn't been home since he dressed like the cowboy in the Village People, on his way home from wherever he had spent the night and wanted to pick up a pack of cigarettes.
Read MoreDear Aspiring Dancer,
Thank you for auditioning to be in the Nutcracker; we can tell just how far this was out of your comfort zone. We appreciate that when you dance, your arms flail all over the place like palm trees during a Category 5 Hurricane, you maintain a comical lack of flexibility even after four years of attempting to be anything but a human tree branch, and you will not stop talking to your neighbor about the movie Enchanted, no matter how loud we play Tchaikovsky as a sign to tell you to shut up.
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