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.
My 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 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’ve done a lot of writerly things for money: reporting, editing, and teaching. I managed to write and teach until I had kids, but parenting was the kiss of doom for balance in my life. Something had to go, and since my spouse was on board, I quit teaching. What little extra time I had, I spent writing. It didn’t pay, but it satisfied a creative need, and it didn’t require a wardrobe. Or parking.
Read MoreYou are sixteen years old, your twin sister just had a miscarriage two days prior, and your mother is taking you both to the gynecologist for the first time. The sound of your heartbeat pounding in your ears envelops the male doctor’s words as he pokes and prods between your open, shaking thighs. You’ve only had sex a handful of times and you’re still thoroughly uncomfortable with a strange man standing between your open legs, looking closely inside of you.
Read MoreI held in my hands the facts describing how he died. The question was whether to share with my mom the details of her father’s combat death.
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 MoreIt is not true today that my children are in school learning about ratios and raising hands. It is not true that my husband is at work teaching teachers about equity in education. It is not true that my dog is sleeping with her nose on her thigh alone in a quiet home. It is true that I go to work as always, but it is not true that my day as a doctor unfolds with its predictable rhythm.
Read More“So you’re the matriarch,” the bartender says as I join my daughter and granddaughter at the bar for a sunset drink.
Read MoreThere is an old saying that until you lose something, you don’t really appreciate it—even though there are things like a lousy friend, a cold, or a broken-down car that you might be glad to be rid of. Two of my favorite things were walking and hiking, things I lost the ability to do when I had a stroke nearly three years ago.
Read MoreWhile the steaming hot water pelts my tired skin, I think of the Mother Orca Tahlequah of the Southern Puget Sound Orca Tribe. For weeks she has carried the body of her dead baby on her back. I feel the twinge in my stomach, that awful twisted wrench of a feeling. I imagine myself crouched down in the water, resting on my knees, and crying it out. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to have love bring you to your knees, but my body can no longer go there. I don’t curl up in the right way anymore. My angles are off. I have no knees to fall to. Like Tahlequah, I must carry the grief upon my back. I must show it to the world.
Read MoreI began losing my eyesight when I was three – a result of poor genetics and squinting at the television too often. My sight worsened until I was nineteen; by then, I was nearly legally blind and opted to have my vision corrected through surgery. Until that point, losing my eyesight afforded me both a gift and a curse – the gift of insight and the curse of knowledge. I saw the world in layers of truths and half-truths, of what people thought they knew and what actually happened behind closed doors.
Read MoreThe Sunday after Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel called me to say that, by law, they could not keep her ashes any longer, I marched into parish office of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and demanded of the receptionist, “How does one become Catholic?” I was directed to a Filipino woman, a parishioner-catechist, who smirked at me with detached affection, just like my mother used to. She told me her name was Grace, to which I replied, “well, that’s a good sign.”
Read MoreI’m sitting on the bench, this time with my pants on, at my midwife’s office.
I’m here because I’m certain I’m off and completely uncertain about what I need to fix it.
Or if I need to fix it.
Or if I can fix it.
Or if it’s even fixable.
I’m here for a postpartum depression evaluation.
“Sit down,” I tell my toddler, calmly but firmly. “Don’t stand in the tub!”
She looks at me, her little legs searching for purchase, and she starts to rise.
She knows she’s not supposed to stand, but she wants that toy just out of reach.
“Sit,” I say again, giving her a look.
Read MoreWhen we were expecting our first child, our friends with babies advised us that living around the corner from the grandparents benefits everyone. My instinct was that a little distance would be better for me and our fledgling family, a necessary step in our independence. We began to explore a move from our Manhattan one-bedroom rental, and I was determined to put a bridge—Throgs Neck or Whitestone, take your pick—between us and both sets of parents.
Read MoreThe woman sits crossed legged on the shore of the silent lake on a crisp spring morning. The lavender mist hovers above the water, as she watches a flock of brown and black birds bob along the surface.
Read MoreA few months ago, I was given a seat from an old movie theatre. The theatre was called The Regent, and it was the one my parents bought in 1949 when I was five. When it closed six years later, I never gave a thought to what might happen to any part of it—the projectors, the screen, the seats—but then, over fifty years later, I happened to hear that a small local museum was mounting an exhibit about small-town theatres. I contacted the curator, and told her what I could about our theatre.
Read MoreThe last time I saw my mother, I received the gift of some powerful clarity about something, and it's something I need reminding of every day.
She saw herself, and thus this world and me, through a filter where all she saw was weight. It truly was ALL SHE SAW when she looked at me. Or at anyone.
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