Blog

What is certain? Nearly nothing. Waiting is like purgatory that middle passage corridor I was told was the reason to christen me and give me a name I’ve never used. “Why did you baptize me Mary Ellen?” “Molly isn’t a saint’s name. You’d be a corridor baby.” The image of all these badly named babies, the misspelled and trendy, the nicknames and the silly, fill my brain. All those babies waiting to be allowed to enter a world deeply in need of their newness, their babyish ways, their ability to make adults feel helpless, uncertain, afraid. Love is standing on the edge of a cliff. Waiting hurts our soul. I wait to hear if my sister has died from the injuries experienced from a hit-and-run. She has. I still see that waiting room, her husband standing in the corner shoeless, my father stone faced, heart breaking fluorescent lights, wanting to turn on some innocent minor accident victim and demand to know why they, anyone, is still alive while my shining star has gone dark?

Read More

I fell. I fell on my way into Whole Foods after an excellent weight class that made me feel fit and relatively young. I’m 64. My left knee hit the concrete and all my not insubstantial weight followed. I tripped over the parking thingie which is called a stanchion which I remembered right before the screen went blank because my kneecap exploded. A nice father leaned down and asked, “Are you all right?” My ears were ringing and my teeth chattering so it took me a moment to say, “I’m fine.” His wife leaned down with her hand outstretched and somehow, I stood. I went into Whole Foods, rode the escalator up and put raspberries, salad, and inexplicably rice into the basket. We have tons of rice. It occurred to me I was in physical agony and so I decided not to tell anyone but to go home and ice my knee. Only our cat would know my shameful secret, I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time. It was my fault I hurt myself. Again.

Read More

Recently, my 85 year-old father broke his neck, which is, of course, terrible. But he survived and I was trying to say something daughterly and encouraging so I remarked that his hair was getting so long he “looked like a poet.” “Yes,” my mother added, drily, “a poet coming out of a drain.” This was in reference to the neck brace he was wearing and remarkably accurate while insensitive which is the really killer combination, cruelty combined with an eye for detail. My mother is a master at that. Upon meeting my newborn baby, my gorgeous, amazing, perfect boy who had subjected me to 72 hours of labor without any family present as he was born in London where my then husband was a reporter for an American Newspaper, she remarked, “With that much head you expect more body.”

Read More