Approximately two weeks after my mother-in-law was granny-napped and installed at her oldest daughter’s family-owned care home, her daughters arranged to escort their mother to her bank and lawyer’s office. Her son (their brother and my husband), who at the time was her POA and property caretaker, had been seen on numerous occasions stealing furniture …
(part one) At some point after the 2020 election, my husband’s oldest sister had to find a new hairdresser and was terribly upset. COVID restrictions had been somewhat recently lifted, and she’d been looking forward to her cut and color ritual, the meandering and soothing chitchat that typically accompanies such salon appointments. However, instead of …
(Warning, the following contains spoilers for Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.) If I hadn’t retired, I’d be hanging kites in my classroom and prepping my Kite Runner unit, which I taught to my seniors every spring. I don’t miss being a teacher, but I miss teaching, and I miss spending spring with Khaled Hosseini’s glorious book. …
Shortly after we moved, my daughter wrote to Santa Claus. She worried she’d be getting coal and whether Santa knew our new address. ‘I’ve been trying my hardest to be good,’ she explained, and thanked him for ‘what you are doing for me and other children.’ She was 11. She’s twenty-five now. Along with a …
Valentine’s Day is next month, but I want to tell you a love story. There’s a boy, yes. And a girl. And they are young, though they feel like adults. They have recently been separated but are now reunited, ablaze with certainty in themselves and their future together. When our story begins, they stand, improbably, …
As I write, Thanksgiving is a few days away, but I’m already listening to Christmas music while cross-stitching ornaments. Usually I wait until after Santa arrives in Herald’s Square to start prepping, but this year I started early. The ornaments take awhile, and the music… I credit my son. Recently, my daughter accompanied me on …
I remember meeting with my guidance counselor in seventh grade and, while I can’t recall their name or gender, I can recall knowing the answer to their VERY SERIOUS QUESTION but not whether it was the right answer. Which, when you are a somewhat bookish kid and also a pleaser, yanks your innards in a …
Middleswarth potato chips are to central Pennsylvania what cheesesteaks are to Philly. You can’t get them anywhere else, and nothing else compares. After college, trips back home always included pit stops to the Sheetz or turnpike hubs to stock up on their BBQ barrels, tangy sweet deliciousness to which I introduced my husband and then …
(*WARNING: the following contains spoilers for Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner) By now you should have read through chapter twelve of The Kite Runner. And please don’t tell me you’ve read when you haven’t. I’ve been doing this a long time and I can tell, especially with this book which contains so many deftly plotted …
My least favorite chore used to be grocery shopping. All those hours spent moving items from the shelves to my cart to the belt to the bags to the car to the house to the kitchen, only to hear several hours later, There’s nothing to eat. A minor thing to complain about, then. Not so …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 