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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I thought about writing this story as fiction: two women, a later-in-life, larger-than-life friendship that changes both of them, a sudden fatal illness. Fiction can fix the broken, prevent the disaster, turn around the inevitable. The child can be saved. The bad guys can be caught. The terminal patient can beat all odds. By choosing fiction, I could change the ending of our story, Diana’s and mine. I could keep her alive. But no. If I did that, it wouldn’t be our story anymore.
Read MoreA policeman stepped from a side street and raised his hand for us to stop.
One hand rested on the pistol jutting out of its holster. Silver handcuffs nuzzled the gun, black-lens sunglasses hid his eyes. An odor of underarm deodorant hung in the air.
He stopped us because Eunice was Black and I was white. It wasn’t illegal for the two of us to be together on the street, but in Apartheid South Africa it may as well have been. The proximity of our bodies alerted this white policeman to something being wrong.
Read MoreIt’s late June 2022, pandemic still a slow burn.
I’m at my parents’ house, on the highest hill in Carlsbad, CA. Nightly, my dad draws dark curtains against the Pacific sunset. I’ve come alone, my sons back home in Chicago with my husband. This is by design.
Read MoreI can’t remember what horrible thing I said to her the night before, so take your pick. Maybe it was after I got a third degree burn getting her dinner out of the toaster oven when I said: “Shirley I’d put a feeding tube in your stomach if I never had to cook another fucking tray of chicken nuggets.”
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreWe’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.
Read MoreIt was the way he shut down when he entered the room.
He’d turned his key in a lock. He’d opened a door. His voice had risen once more in our dwelling, risen once more in me.
“Hello.”
Read MoreIn my married life in Palo Alto, in our new condo, with congenial neighbors and other friends who were all interested in the usual Boomer preoccupations—ethnic foods, excellent but cheap wines, places to travel to, movies--I kept pressing down cryptic feelings I couldn’t name or understand, was afraid to acknowledge but couldn’t ignore
Read MoreI’d been told in my psychologist’s office that I scored “high” in areas of the MMPI (a psychiatric test used in the seventies to determine where one’s area of mental health needed attention)—translation, “Not good.” Identity and Orientation were the categories I rang the bell on and in a voice worthy of that slug character in Star Wars, my psychologist asked, “Are you aroused by women?”
Read MoreThe insertion of my daughter’s feeding tube was sold as a simple procedure- up the nose and down the throat, swallow, swallow, swallow, the nurse explained. Like threading a piece of spaghetti through your face!
Read MoreI glanced at my cell and saw a confusing text from Dad: Does Shoshana know? We have to tell her. My gut seized. Something was wrong. My parents split when I was an infant but kept in touch, long after I grew estranged from my mother and extended family. Dad occasionally provided updates on their recent calamities. Surely, this was one of them. I called him. Nothing. C'mon. I called again and this time he picked up. No hellos.
Read MoreI expected to like being a mother.
I expected to be good at being a mother.
I expected to raise children who would appreciate that I wasn’t an embarrassment, not obese or out of style, or driving an old beat up Buick.
Read MoreBefore Thomas was born, I’d had two miscarriages. Both early according to the calendar, but both late enough to fill me with a deep, empty sorrow. When my first pregnancy had been confirmed, I felt euphoric. I had a miracle within me, a new soul the world had never known. And then it was suddenly gone, fading away in pools of blood until nothing of the wonder was left at all.
Read MoreThe moment my son was placed in my arms, his 8 pounds, 6 ounces, and 21 inches of new life pressed into me—it was not just his weight but the pressure of my past and the gravity of the future colliding together in the sterile room filled with a faintly metallic smell clinging to the air, but beneath it, there was the unmistakable scent of newborn skin, sweet and raw, untouched by the world.
Read MoreOn the first day of preschool, my son gripped my hand. He peered into the classroom, his eyes wide. “Go ahead,” I said, squeezing my fingers out of his and nudging him forward. The teacher approached and crouched to his level, saying his name with a smile.
Read More“Now I lay me down to sleep…” she said. I repeated her words, each consonant round in my four-year-old mouth, my high-pitched whisper barely audible as I mirrored my grandmother. I remember feeling that each utterance had weight, like what she was teaching me was important even if I was unsure of the words meaning. For me, it was nap time, and this ritual was part of the routine. After we finished our prayer lesson, my grandmother tucked me into the bed and as my eyes slowly closed, I gazed around at the small haven where I rested.
Read MoreThe Sister hunkered down in my little brother’s sled, gathering her habit around her, the rubber soles of her nurses’ shoes squeaking against the plastic. She and the older Sister beside her were not dressed for the January cold, unlike my two siblings and me, cocooned in snow pants, puffy coats, mittens, and stocking hats.
Read MoreBusted.
We’d just finished brushing our teeth in Todd’s bathroom when he caught me in the mirror. Caught me sneering at the empty Yoo-hoo bottle near the sink, its cheerful yellow label a taunt.
“You don't like anything I like,” he accused me with his toothbrush. “Football. Battlestar Galactica. Yoo-hoo.”
Read MoreI don’t think Jordan started out with a battle plan. But, by the time we lived together, their troops were in action in a war I didn’t even know had been declared. I didn’t have time to grab a white handkerchief, or a tissue, or my Abercrombie & Fitch tank top tinged by age. I’m sure the red flags were all there in hindsight, but I try not to assign blame to myself for not seeing the signs—for not noticing that slowly, the person I once loved was abusing me. They attacked in a three-step plan, systematically stripping away the fundamental trust I had in myself I had clawed myself into having.
Read MoreThe majority of my childhood family backpacking trips occurred in New England. My father’s deep love of the wilderness initiated these excursions, but the whole family came to love how trees and natural waterways calmed us. Making such a journey with four small children was a tall order. In exchange for the extra effort involved for such trips—my mom was already working her ass off at home—my parents negotiated for my dad to be in charge of planning, packing, and cooking. Summer after summer, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, we set forth: to the Catskills, the White Mountains, and the Adirondacks—my dad’s pack piled higher than the top of his head and my mom’s not much shorter. If there were any tension around these trips, my parents kept it to themselves, and naturally I was eager to make similar forays once I reached adulthood myself.
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