The Barbie in the Middle
The Barbie in the Middle

Barbie. Everyone’s favorite (or favorite-to-loathe) doll-slash-role model-slash-best friend-slash-impossible ideal-slash-icon of cultural demise. Even though I’ve always harbored a fairly incurious attitude toward the Barbie-as-perfection phenomenon, I nevertheless loved playing with my inanimate, buxom, rubbery friends. I didn’t compare myself to them, and they didn’t dictate my self worth. They were just one population in an only child’s universe of dessert-scented dolls, bathtub mermaids, and little plastic people who lived in a furnished tree.

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True StoriesDiya Mehtawomen storytelling, aging, middle-age Comment
Cavewoman
Cavewoman

I’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. 

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumCancer, breast cancer, Motherhood, Parenting Comment
The Lessons that Replaced the Phantom Limb
The Lessons that Replaced the Phantom Limb

We broke up on a Thursday in a foreign country where I only spoke a disjointed version of the language. In a charming little restaurant, he sat across the table from me, reached for my hand, told me he loved me, but…I guess the rest doesn’t really matter. He was back on the dating apps two days later. It’s such a disorienting thing to feel your entire world implode, to watch dreams of a life together disappear into thin air. I questioned if they had ever been within reach at all. They weren’t, but I didn’t know that yet.

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True StoriesKristina Buschrelationships, Broken, BrokenheartComment
Dreams in Color
Dreams in Color

Cold. Alone. Dead. These were the few words that registered among the many spoken to me on that horrific afternoon when they came to tell me my son was gone. Fentanyl was added to the mix over the coming hours.

“Who? What? How?” repeated over and over again was all I could muster in response.

“We don’t know,” was their answer.

My living, breathing nightmare had only just begun.

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True StoriesKristina Buschmotherhood, death, grief, loss Comments
What Does it Matter What Mom Wants
What Does it Matter What Mom Wants

My 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.

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True StoriesSelena RaygozaMotherhood, growth, education, success Comments
Monster
Monster

There are people who have this rare gift. They may be charming and intelligent, but that's not what will make you fall for them. They will look at you with adoring puppy eyes across the table, oblivious to the rest of the dinner guests. They will deliver prideful this-hot-girl-is-my-lover looks when you're out together. They will make you think every crazy-in-love song ever written is about the two of you, you just used to think it was some soapy wordplay because you'd never felt like this before.

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Diya MehtaComment
Heart/Beat
Heart/Beat

It was supposed to be a fun weekend. Just a quick overnight from Oakland to Los Angeles. A visit with Joe’s family that would double as a celebration of my forty-first birthday. My boys, Max and Leo, then seven and four, would be with their dad for the weekend. Things were still a little iffy on their dad’s end, with only six months sobriety under his belt, but they’d all be at his parents’ home. The boys would be safe under their grandparents’ watch.

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Selena Raygoza Comment
Right On the Inside
Right On the Inside

Something bad happens when you’re eight years old, maybe nine, and you don’t understand it, you don’t have the words, but you do know—with throbbing certainty—what it means. Your dolls will be your only kids, because now you will never have one. Your insides have gone all wrong.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumperiodComment
That Damn Bottle
That Damn Bottle

I only feared two things as a kid: death and my mother’s Dabur Amla Coconut Hair Oil. Each morning, I watched as the soulful hues of gray and blue intertwine in the sky, inviting a promise of a fresh start along with a tender slap of morning nausea. I hear my mother’s screams, “जल्दी उठो बस निकलने वाली nहै!!!” or “wake up now the bus is about to leave!!!” as my platinum chrome alarm clock sparks a great epiphany — my perception shifting from fantasy to reality in a heartbeat.

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Selena RaygozaComment
On Aphasia
On Aphasia

“There are two parts of the mind. The outer mind that records facts and the inner mind that says ‘Yes’ and ‘no.” –Agnes Martin

1.

Once, years back, a woman, an acquaintance, asked me why I decided to become a speech-language pathologist, a person who works on helping children who can’t say their rs, who sits in quiet classrooms with the thud of the other, happier children outside, or who leans in, in the dead of winter, in a trailer because that’s the only extra space, a metallic trailer with stucco on the sides, and who rehearses the way sounds go.

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True StoriesKristina Buschlanguage, trauma, careerComment
A Stop at Ellicott City
A Stop at Ellicott City

On Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 11:54 p.m., a piece of rail snapped beneath an eighty-car train carrying 9,837 tons of coal as it passed over a bridge above Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Just a moment before the accident, Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, two nineteen-year-old friends spending one last night of summer together before heading back to college, sat on that same bridge, dangling their legs over the edge.

Just a moment after, the train cars tipped over on their bodies, crushing them beneath piles of coal.

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True StoriesKristina Buschgrief, death, friendshipComment
The Sign
The Sign

It was a perfect August day, and the Wolf River was clear and cool. The leaf canopy of spruce and cottonwood sparkled overhead, like shards of brilliant green glass backlit by intermittent bursts of sunlight.

Dave and I were trying out the twin red kayaks that his kids had given us the previous Christmas. Everyone agreed we had been working too hard, and the weight of a business we could no longer save was taking its toll.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfeminism, relationships, independence Comment
Meno-Pause
Meno-Pause

I have a problem with many words in the English language, the most recent and personally applicable being “menopause.” Apparently, the term is a Greek mashup of “month” and “cease.” I’d have less of a problem if the English term were “menocease,” since “menopause” suggests that something about the female body—my body in this case—is “pausing” and will, ASAP, resume its regularly scheduled programming. But, that’s not the case. My body is going off the air.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumaging, menopause, body image Comments
Last Dance
Last Dance

It’s our last night on Kauai together, yet not together. For the past seven days, we’ve been staying at different places due to the separation, Ian and I in a condo, and you at a hotel. We have a late morning flight back to the Bay Area tomorrow, and when we reach San Mateo, you’ll drop me off at my apartment, a tiny one bedroom I’m renting several blocks away from the house we raised Ian in–the house where you and Ian now live.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfamily history, family Comments
Loose
Loose

There’s a ten year old girl, long unbrushed brown hair in a private school uniform running late for lunch from gym class. She’s alone. There are eight buttons on her white oxford shirt. This is her third month in a real school after being homeschooled for her entire life, her seventh move to her fifth state, Ohio this time. Her sister, Liz, just two grades below her in third was recently teased for not knowing the word fart.

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True StoriesSelena RaygozaComment