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The first recipe I ever attempted was Baked Alaska. I was eleven.
I’m not sure how my mother conveyed that she didn’t want to teach me how to cook. It was more implied than directly stated. I understood her meaning in the same way I understood that I should not ask why, unlike my younger, fair-haired brother and sister, who looked nothing like me, I was born in a town four hours north of our home in Hanford, California.
Read MoreMy mother made dinner every single night. We didn’t eat out. Ever. I grew up on sixties Midwestern food, colored by my mother’s aversions and preference. She loved her meals fiercely, but anything could be ruined by a bite of shell, bone, or gristle. No one likes biting down on whatever reminds us of our protein’s genesis, but for Mom it ground the meal to a halt. She preferred everything as processed as possible.
Read MoreDisclaimer: When I was a kid, Hollywood had me believing that The Typical Grandmother was, among other things, soft-spoken, petite, and cute, with an old-lady name like Alice, Betty, Dottie, or Mildred—Millie for short. She played Bingo or canasta, spoke of the days when a soda cost a nickel, and baked cookies better than Betty Crocker.
Mine was not like that.
Read MoreLast January, I googled couples’ classes NYC, confirmed macarons were gluten-free, and booked me and my wife a chilly, late-night adventure in the East Village.
Read MoreJessa has always fed us. Her friendship set the table, asked us in, kept the bowls full. For decades she has reminded us that nourishment is more than survival—it is comfort, it is delight.
Read MoreOur species had not yet persevered through Y2K, but my time was short for subatomic reasons. My father had imploded, six feet of a Johnny Cash accent spiraling to the carpet in a “cardiac event.” My mother was one hour away, watching Frasier reruns in an apartment with cathedral ceilings. I had just broken the tamper-proof seal on The Best Years Of My Life.
Read MoreDad and I bushwhacked a north facing slope along Northern California’s Smith River in a swath of forest we hoped contained culinary mushrooms. Pink rhododendrons blossomed in an understory of redwood, cedar and fir. We were hunting for chanterelles, yellow feet or hedgehogs. The mushroom buyer didn’t pay much per pound, but I desperately needed the money to pay for my half of an abortion.
Read More“Mama, when are we going home?” my son whispers, his eyes glued to the car window.
I grip the steering wheel and glance behind me. His flip-flops and beach towel are strewn across the back seat. His goggles, around his neck. Pinkish popsicle stains skip across his white camp t-shirt. All signs of a good summer, or so I would have thought.
I wish I knew how to answer him. I’m not sure I want to go home.
“You miss being home?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Read MoreMy personal rules in the girls’ locker room: no talking, listening, or looking. Change clothes very quickly. At the end, dress under the towel.
I wear my cut-off full slip, as I have every school day for a month or more. I’ve left it long enough to tuck into a skirt and into my gym shorts. The only shape to my chest comes from my bony ribs, but that’s not what concerns me. I wear the thing so I don’t have to expose myself completely during P.E. as The One Girl Without a Bra.
Read MoreI scrape off the half-peeled remnants of a glittery purple manicure, even though it’s my last tangible reminder of my days with my daughter Ellie. Three weeks after dropping her off at college two states away, I’m still fighting tears. Maybe I’ll keep these ugly jagged edges for a little longer, I think as I stare at my hands. With her bedroom cleaned and sterile, the door perpetually open like a mouth that has forgotten to close, I don’t have many other traces of my daughter’s presence in our home. Except for the reality that my phone lights up with her text messages all day long.
Read More“I hate you,” I say with a vitriol that I don’t really feel and never will. My dad’s face is turning red from choking back his chortles. The neon green paper full of words has now fallen to the floor, and I pray that the parakeet hopping along the carpet finds his way to it and tears it to pieces like he has the edges of my books.
Read MoreI’m sorry I can’t be in the classroom today. I’m grateful you’re here. I teach three 100 minute blocks of 8th Grade English. I’m available any time for a text or phone call at 503-xxx-xxxx. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are struggling with a student, or need clarification on anything.
Read MoreI laughed when they called to schedule it, when I put it in my calendar over the faint traces of where you’d been. I’m not surprised. This much I’ve learned about grief—that it’s cruel in how it compounds, strata over strata of reddened rock.
Read MoreOf all the memories that I have of my great great grandmother from the first thirteen years of my life, the one that I remember most of all occurred in the tiny kitchen of her small home, tucked away in the orchards of Live Oak. I was in sixth grade, and she was teaching me how to sweep the right way, a skillset that my mother had still yet to properly impart upon me; she was too busy smoking weed and sleeping with her latest boyfriend.
Read MoreI was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner when I heard the glass shatter. I simultaneously took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable outburst.
Read MoreI was deceived by the feel of her supple cheek that day after she died. She was like a green limb reaching for the sun, severed at the whim of the wind, the tree’s canopy of little protection. When illicit Oxy’s calming wind blew into her veins did she suddenly realize what she consumed was coated in fentanyl poison? Was it like being in the eye of the hurricane where there is calm for a moment before chaos takes over or was it like floating away on her favorite pair of Nike Airs™?
Read MoreThe phone rings. I see the vet clinic’s number and my throat goes dry. I feel a jolt of anxiety. Although there can be no more bad news, I don’t want to talk to them. I just want all this to go away, to be one of my nightmares. “Mosi’s ashes are ready for pickup,” says the receptionist softly.
Read MoreI 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.
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