Tag: love
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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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He Carried Her Purse
There was a couple we used to watch for. This was back at the small CPA firm, during my divorce and the raw period just after it. My desk sat by a big window that looked out onto a parking lot and a walkway, and we shared the building with a few restaurants, so there…
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First and Last
They were my first friends, and I think they will be my last. Two women who have been in my life since before I can really remember not knowing them, who were there at the very beginning and are, I hope, going to be there at the very end. I’ve written elsewhere in these pages…
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Eventually
After the breakup, the one that took me longer to recover from than I’ll comfortably admit, I did something I’d never done before. I made a list. More like a set of specifications, the kind you draw up after you’ve been burned and decided that next time you’ll be careful, as if carefulness were ever…
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First Choice
For most of my life I have believed I’m not anyone’s first choice. I don’t say that for sympathy. I say it because it’s the quiet fact I’ve carried under all my friendships, the lens I’ve viewed them through, and I’ve only recently started to wonder if the lens itself might be wrong. Let me…
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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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Around the Corner
I was three the day Nancy came around the corner and knocked on our door. Her family was new to the neighborhood. She wanted to know if I’d come play with her daughter. So, I went. And I cried the entire afternoon, the way a shy three-year-old cries in a house that isn’t hers, wanting…
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On her own
For most of her childhood, my youngest came as a pair. She was reserved out in the world. She was quiet in public, watchful, the kind of little girl who hung back and let her older sister go first. The two of them did everything together. If I signed one up for something, they both…
