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A Good Reason to Use Bad Language
When I was growing up, the women in my family cursed. My mother and her sisters spewed white-hot streams of profanity that hissed and steamed on the air. Even my grandmother, an otherwise soft-spoken woman with a strong religious upbringing, kicked up a verbal ruckus when provoked. The women in my family cursed, but mainly… Read more
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Send Me the Bill
I. What I Remember We were in a hurry. Mother always walked fast, but I struggled more than usual to keep up with her as we sped through the train station with her suitcase. She held my hand and dragged me along behind her, her oversized purse swinging from her shoulder, clunking into my head… Read more
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On Teaching, Imposter Syndrome, and the Hazards of Homonyms
“I am a liar,” Tony said in my English composition class. To prepare for a writing assignment, I was leading my students in a discussion of identity markers: race, gender, socioeconomic status. As usual during our class sessions, Tony had been sitting slumped in his seat, arms folded over his chest, staring at me, smirking.… Read more
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Memory of Payton in Four Fragments
I. Bull’s Eye Aunt Dinny and Mother walked ahead, their white shirts lit by the evening sun, with Cousin Payton and me behind them. He and I walked side-by-side because Aunt Dinny said Payton and I should be friends. The dirt road behind my grandmother’s house was straight, running east to west, with woods on… Read more
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Perfectionism: A Coin Toss
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2000, Martha Stewart described herself as a “maniacal perfectionist.” You remember Martha Stewart, right? A woman whose career has spanned six decades. A woman who turned a Connecticut-based catering business into a billion-dollar corporation. Someone who has cultivated publicity-provoking friendships with a wide cast of famous characters: Donald… Read more
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Martha Redux
David and I spend most of our evenings together in our new home. A pair of later-life newlyweds, we devote the time to bringing our two, already-full lives together and merging them into one new shared life. At the end of each day, we come together for bits of conversation, the luxury of comfortable silences,… Read more
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