HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.
In the minutes after she was born, all of the lights came on. We watched her climb the wall of my body and land, exhausted, at the shore of my breast. Under the sharp white of hospital light, they did the weighing and measuring, and she screamed so that every number and value only reached my ears as alive, alive, more evidence of her realness, her presence. She sent howls up into a brightness that must have been like looking at the sun.
Read MoreEvery week she asked me how I felt and every week, while, in general things were “fine,” I always told her there was almost always a day, or a couple of hours a day, where despondence grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was as if someone, something, was wrestling me and trying to get me to give in, to tap out. We were in different weight classes though. I was the lightweight and the despondence was the heavyweight and I didn’t have any agility or tricks up my sleeve to counteract the weight disparity between us.
Read MoreI stood in front of the gate, but the Delta screen didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t the airline have cleared out the Denver flight if the Nashville flight was due to board in the next 10 minutes? I looked for any indication that the departure gate had been changed; I found none.
Read MoreEvery Thanksgiving and Christmas we haul the extra table up from the basement: a cheap white pine table, the varnish yellow now, that we used in the kitchen until eventually it became too embarrassing. When we carry it upstairs, we do it in pieces, and once it's in the dining room the tabletop gets flipped over and lowered to the floor so someone--usually my husband or my son Sam--can attach the legs. As one of them works with screws and Allen wrenches, I read the legends inscribed by our kids on the underside of the table when they were little; the one we see first, in large red letters, is "Boo, Sam sucks a lot, by Nick."
Read MoreI winced, not because it was time, but because the nurse had used my full name, a name only my mom still called me. As the nurse announced it I briefly felt as though I was a teenager being called to wash dishes or explain a grade on my report card. But my mom was miles away now, not there to micromanage me as I made a big decision for myself.
Read MoreI’m still sitting in this car going nowhere, staring at the side of our house with its mildew stains branching across the siding because we’re overdue for a power wash. The car was a splurge purchase several years ago. A Volvo with peanut butter leather interior which, every time I run my hand over, brings me all the way back to an elementary school friend, whose parents drove a similar car, had oriental rugs, and a dog too designer for our cocker spaniel neighborhood. A time when I thought it might be possible to live forever, or at least frozen in time like Harrison Ford in Star Wars, to be thawed out later. The hero never really dies.
Read MoreMy toddler is standing next to my bed. Again. I swing my legs out of bed. “Lie down,” I whisper. He rushes back to his makeshift mattress on the floor, lies down, and waits for me to tuck the blankets around him. Again. At least he’s not screaming at me about this routine anymore. We’ve done this back-and-forth battle two nights in a row now. If I don’t give in, the worst should be behind us. I just hope my husband doesn’t sabotage all my efforts by allowing him to crawl into his side of the bed. Since I’m awake I might as well write about it.
Read MoreMy preferred route, Back Cove Trail, curves its way around the water of Portland, Maine’s Casco Bay, following Baxter Boulevard to Tukey’s Bridge, bending back toward the parking lot, a Mobius strip circuit for contemplation and exercise. Its gravel is familiar to me, smelling of ocean, sun, fauna, and dog. The tide is coming in.
Read MoreMy birthday is December 30, five days after Jesus’s and one day before New Year’s Eve. It is the perfect day to be born if, like me, you prefer your birthday slide by unnoticed. I never had to bring any classroom cupcakes. Not a single black streamer hung from my office door on my fortieth, which suited me just fine.
Read MoreMy twelve-year-old son is conducting research, interviewing as many people as he can at the Hugo’s Supermarket downtown. He’s on a mission and there’s no stopping him. His statistical analysis involves the following variables: person, car driven, and favorite soda. I’m not sure which is the dependent variable, but I’m sure he’ll correlate vehicles with soda type soon. Maybe make a discovery he can sell to Pepsi. That’s his favorite one, after all.
Read MoreI fumble through the kitchen searching for the button that turns on the light under the microwave. The one that doesn’t shock the darkness out of me. The house is still and quiet.
Start the coffee. Open the laptop. Light the candle that smells of evergreens.
Read More1. Make friends with alcohol.
In the past, you disliked that feeling of being slightly out of control and fuzzy around the edges. And having one too many key-lime-pie martinis at that work happy hour was a tad embarrassing, especially when you started talking about wanting a boob job.
Read MoreCondensation gathers along the windows, giant teardrops sliding down the panes. The air inside sweats heavily, leaving its imprint on our booth seats and table. I have this habit of tucking my hands underneath my thighs when I’m cold. But the seats are sticky, so I interlace my fingers and hold them between my legs. It’s no wonder people get sick easily.
Read MoreBat bites are difficult to see and may not be felt.
- CDC, Div. of Public Affairs
The chief concern was “bat bite.” There was no mystery in those words. The mystery began when the concern was personified, as in, “A bat bit my daughter.” That’s medicine.
Read MoreDear Breasts,
It’s been almost two years since I saw you. My last memory of us is you hidden underneath a checkered teal hospital gown that flapped against my naked bottom. I couldn’t look at you. I pictured the doctors cutting you off and resting you on a silver platter next to the operating table. Two jello molds, each with a cherry on the top. The whole thing felt surreal.
Read MoreI stretch out my legs on the sand. I can see her almost approach me. She is wearing a white beach jacket and a straw hat with a veil over it. In sunglasses and standing proud, her breasts sprout. No one would ever have suspected the loss of one or the other. She is smiling, and her mouth says, ‘I am happy in the land of palm trees, coconuts, and certainly, I don’t have to search for any monkeys because I was never one.’
Read MoreMy daughter’s teeth stand in a crooked row. Her two cuspids rise above the rest, turned diagonally like twisted fence posts. The uneven spaces in between her teeth make a crooked grin, but she smiles wide anyway. She laughs with her mouth open, and her blue eyes disappear for that moment as joy swallows up her whole face. Sometimes she talks too loudly, not yet having learned a girl’s acceptable volume, not knowing to hide her enthusiasm.
Read MoreI filled a new Lisa Frank notebook with blank templates of MASH. Mansion, apartment, shack, house; ten kids, twenty, zero, one. I asked my mother to get me a case of Mountain Dew to share. I’d finally been invited to a sleepover with the older girls. I braced myself for something far different from the sleepovers I’d had thus far with my best friend, Courtney.
Read MoreThe trees are a riot of color as I drive past the grounds of the Episcopal Church in my town. The field that becomes the annual pumpkin patch worthy of inclusion in a Peanuts special is heartbreakingly bare. Every fall since I moved to this New England town over twenty years ago, the arrival of the pumpkins has been a seasonal passage.
Read MoreI step outside to enjoy the storm’s reprieve from the scorching August day. Suddenly, a wall of rain advances like an army, the wind its battle cry. Phone in hand, I start to video the drama, but when whole trees hurtle past me like javelins, I run inside and cower in the basement. It’s brief—five minutes, maybe ten. Then, chirping birds signal the army’s retreat and I slink upstairs. The first thing I notice is water streaming down the interior walls under the closed windows, sobbing to release their fear.
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