Tag: family
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Without her
My mother died at sixty. My kids were six, four, and two. What came next, in order: a divorce, single motherhood. And about nine months after we lost her, my father moved away. There was still some family, technically. But asking the few who remained came at a cost, one way or another, in ways…
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I See
The paperwork said it was an emergency. It said I was self-medicating my cancer. I have never tried pot or any non-prescription medication. I have never had a drinking problem. And at the time he filed it, I wasn’t taking anything at all — I was in remission. It was a lie so total that…
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Each Other
They had just turned ten and eleven, and the oldest had just turned fourteen, the day I think of when I picture the three of them together. We were at Point Lobos, down past Carmel, where the big rocks meet the ocean, and my three were up on them, climbing, all three hanging on to…
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Come Back Later
Before my son was born, my mom told me she wasn’t sure what kind of grandmother she’d be. She’d already gone over and beyond as a mother, poured absolutely everything she had into raising us, and I think she assumed being a grandmother would be more of the same, a similar dynamic, maybe with a…
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My Two Poppies
I had two grandfathers, and they were about as different as two men can be. My dad’s dad was a truck driver. His world was small and warm and complete: his chair, his miniature poodle, a cold can of beer, the ballgame coming in on the radio, a deck of cards. He didn’t need much…
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Sent Away
When I was an infant, I was sent to live with my grandparents for a while. My sister stayed home. I still don’t fully understand the reasons or the timeline, and the people who could explain it aren’t really here to ask anymore, but the fact of it has come to mean a great deal…
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A Span of Values
My ex filed against me about once a month on average I would say. Filing was the weapon. Every time he filed, I had to respond, and responding cost money and energy, and money and energy were the point. He could reach into my life on a monthly schedule and make it more expensive and…
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Bowl Cuts
My girls hate the pictures. Every so often they’ll come across old photos of themselves from when they were little, and there it is, the haircut. The bowl cut that is round, slightly-too-even, unmistakably-a-kid’s-haircut look, sitting on their heads in photo after photo. They groan. They laugh. They ask, in the way kids do, why…
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You Always Believe the Mother
My son took nineteen hours. Both of my girls took two. Two hours, start to finish, both times. These days when someone says “two-hour delivery” they mean something turning up from Amazon, a phone charger or a bag of dog food left on the porch. I delivered two entire human beings in that window. I…
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Montaña de Oro
I found it when I was at Cal Poly, and it became my favorite place on earth, and it has never lost the title. The entrance is a road lined with eucalyptus, tall and silver green, and driving into it always did something to me, some small reliable lift, like the curtain going up before…
