It must have seemed possible to invent a more palatable past, to stay one step ahead of the truth if one just moved often and fast.
Category: Family
First Love
He was the first boy I ever loved, my cousin Randy. Our mothers were sisters and close, and we'd been close since I don't even remember, since I was born. I can still see us in the pool one hot California summer day, I was maybe seven, he nine years old when Randy said he'd …
Happy Maternity Day
It's a tricky one, Mother's Day. It means well. It started out well and then, well, it met Capitalism and kind of lost it's way. In recent years some brave voices have quietly reminded us that all this in-your-face motherly fantasy, every May, does not bring unmitigated joy to all. I confess to being sometimes …
Sacrificing Innocents to the Cult of Trump
It was after a Maundy Thursday, or maybe Good Friday service and Paul, lapsed Catholic and attending all the Holy Week services for the first time in a very long time, was hearing all the readings and listening with a critical ear. Allow me to paraphrase my wise hubby, "So, all these politicians cutting services …
Mother’s (birth)Day
Today would have been my mother's 82nd birthday. I can't even imagine what a wizened old crone she would have been, what with the sun-exposure, the smoking, the arthritis and asthma. I can't imagine this specifically because the cigarettes killed her at 49, when I was 21, and that was a long time ago. We …
A Wedding Dress
Shimmering fabric, delicate stitching, sparkling sequins, and warm, tiny seed pearls. All of it swathed in yellowing plastic and stuffed in a dilapidated box, a veteran of four moves in two years. Not my wedding dress, but my predecessor's. When one marries for the second time, particularly when one marries a widow(er), one encounters …
Passages and Paths, Obvious & Obscure
Yesterday afternoon, a room full of young Americans in every color young Americans appear, raised their hands and swore alike , "... So help me God", to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Raising his right hand and swearing with them was Paul's grandson, Levi. "... So help …
Kids, Cameras, & Captures
One of the things I love about photography is it gives me a handy place to hide and watch people. This is a big difference between me and Paul: though both introverts I find people fascinating, while his personal jury is out (I'm being kind). It's a difference that binds rather than dividing us, as …
Six Degrees of Immigration
The year I don't know, but in the early days of the 20th Century a young man from a small village outside Kiev boarded a ship in Frankfort, Germany, crossed the Atlantic and, passing through Ellis Island, an anonymous agent recorded him under the Anglicized name, Bernard Gross. He married a fellow immigrant, a girl from the old …
Weekend Coffee Share: Mother’s Day Edition
If we were having coffee, I'd wish you a Happy Mother's Day if you're a mother, and maybe whether you are or not we would talk about our own mothers, grandmothers, and the other women who mothered us. With unadulterated affection I'd tell you about my Auntie Helene, possibly the most motherly woman I ever knew, …
Southern Fried Californian 