Why Motherhood by Shay Galloway FollowFollowFollow My mother did not want seven children. She birthed me at the age of seventeen, her high school diploma incomplete, her own mother slowly dying. I imagine the discovery of my conception was not one of joy and wonder,...
The Turquoise Mountains by Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio FollowFollowFollow My first canvas hangs on the wall of my art studio in Waltham, MA. It is an abstract landscape of blues, browns, and purples, evoking mountains, lakes, and volcanoes. Throughout the first part...
Country Mouse and City Mouse by Katherine Riegel FollowFollowFollow For Carolyn 1. One of us thinks too little about weight. One of us thinks too much. She is all angles, like the drawings of women in pattern catalogs at the fabric store. I am all rounded: my chin, my...
We Are Doing Our Best by Eileen Cunniffe FollowFollowFollow We are everywhere, the middle-aged, aging daughters and sons. Watch us folding walkers and wheelchairs into trunks, and then unfolding them again in handicapped spaces or next to sidewalk cutouts. Watch us as...
Chicken Feet by Andreea Ceplinschi FollowFollowFollow Alexandru & Andreea ca. 1987, photo from author’s family archives I could only love you the same way our mother loved chicken feet. We weren’t rich, but our grandparents raised chickens and mother could make...
Anticipatory Grief by Debbi Welch FollowFollowFollow Isn’t good old-fashioned grief enough? Loss, tears, the flooding of memories? I’ve grieved and am still grieving my mother, father, stepfather, and brother, as well as many other relatives and dear friends. I’ve sat...
Sonata by Julie Lockhart FollowFollowFollow C-sharp (#): Compositions in a minor scale, such as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata in C# Minor,” can evoke a misty evening of sad contemplation, moody ruminations, even grief. When Michael lived with me before we married, I...
Grandma Helen by Stacy Alderman FollowFollowFollow The only picture I’d ever seen of my maternal grandmother was her wedding portrait. Its muted hues, her close-lipped smile, the bundle of blooms in her hands, were spread in canvas across a 10×12 frame, and this...
Educating Grandma by Marilyn Morgan FollowFollowFollow A product of the fifties, I grew up with Donna Reed, Pat Boone, and the most daring heartthrob of all, Elvis Presley. So when my fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Lia, said to me, “Grandma, I’m not a girl,” I felt...
Drawing Blood by Sherry Stratton FollowFollowFollow Blood draws have been hard on me my whole life. The medical techs tell me my veins are small. Sometimes they resort to a pediatric needle. And I’ve learned there’s such a thing as a “butterfly needle.” Once, I was...
