I drive the coast road through my childhood and teenage years. When I reach the spot where I’m the one who makes the decisions, I pull over for a moment.
As a goof on a sweltering day in August ’73, my cousin Aldo tried to fry an egg on his brother Rocco’s beloved ’66 Mustang GT. It wasn’t hot enough; uncooked egg oozed over the Mustang’s candy-apple-red lacquer.
Mugs slide around cabinets with the ship’s roll, yaw, pitch.
“Lie down,” she said. “And look up.” I felt tufts of grass lumpy under my back. Above was an expanse of deep blue-black and pinpricks of light.
"Hurry up in the shower!" I yell, as my son's bathing quickly drains all the hot water from the tank. This was never a problem in the school years, when there was a natural order to things and school started early in the morning.
In front of the candy display stood a man in a rumpled suit, balding and paunchy, abjectly staring, unable to decide. Suddenly, the man became life’s absurdity writ small …
I'm giving this girl a ride back to college and on the New Jersey Turnpike she says, "Try? THC laced with acid." In my crowd, the studiers, we just smoke grass. Here is my chance to be cool.
My interviewer has just emailed me that his wi-fi is terrible, and that our video call will now be a simple, old-fashioned phone call. So there’s no one to see that I’ve put on pants—
I choose rye, it seems dignified and things are awfully broken.
Pennies in the fountain reflecting the casino’s lights are incandescent copper. I sit by the water taking in the humans around me, some of them masked.
Only three people had the number: One never called, one was dying, and the last was my Aunt Sandra. When it rang that August morning, I stood and watched it.
My grandmother believed you could tell a lot about people by their guest bathroom, hence the concern emerging in this coffin-like space: wallpaper of expressionless clowns framed like photo-booth mug shots from the local precinct, like sepia-toned images found on library microfiche while researching for a report on Wyatt Earp.
I peel seventeen soaked almonds. I prepare a concoction of Ayurvedic water that alleviates acidity. I cut a lemon and squeeze to curdle milk for a bowl of cottage cheese.
An unusually cold Australian winter morning. The light creeps just so, momentarily tricking me into thinking I’m tucked away in my London apartment, despite the distance in years since I've lived there.
Dad, can we stop in Michigan? A grunt from the driver’s seat. Dad! I’ve never been to Michigan. I can get another state!
The hawk coasts on warm air currents, loose, wavy orbits around an invisible center. He climbs higher—a black speck in the swell of blue sky—his appearance surely a sign to guide me, comfort me, remind me of my place.
In the Holles Street Hospital maternity ward I was one of fourteen women facing each other through a dense pall of cigarette smoke from our beds across an expanse of linoleum floor. The babies were rolled up like loaves of fresh bread in metal cots at the foot of each of our beds.
Did we mean nothing? Did I imagine all of those affectionate times, when it seemed like I was your world?
I’d been in that headspace so many times, I immediately empathized and wanted to help. I didn’t want to intrude, but asked her “Are you okay?”
Pinch your nose, I tell him. He’s half crying, half giggling as I wipe his hands and face, as I remove his bloody clothes.