THE NEXT MORNING: 08:17 The light filtering through the living room window is weak and diffuse.  It’s a familiar light, in an unfamiliar window.  I watch dust motes float through the beams for a moment before I even think to wonder where I am.  Because those aren’t my dust motes.  And this isn’t my…

Eleven days til Christmas and I feel like a tightrope walker, perched on the rope of duty, putting one foot in front of the other in an effort to make it through the season without falling. It would be so easy to just give up and drop. But I keep my toes wrapped tightly to…

Inside the warm car we sit and wait, parked in front of my son’s elementary school, for the first bell to ring. Lily, my beautiful daughter, speaks from her seat in the back, describing her class science project, how they will try to design and build a house that the teacher can’t blow down with…

On the way home from lunch one day my husband and I saw a sign for Gaglione. We had just moved to Italy and had nothing better to do on such a beautiful summer’s day, so we followed the left tine of the forked road to see what kind of hamlet gets a name like…

This essay was first published by Left Hooks.   After the last out was announced by the smooth baritone of Bob Sheppard, the crowd wearing team jerseys and hats moved slowly down creaky escalators and steep ramps in the old Yankee Stadium where Babe Ruth walloped home runs and Yogi Berra wondered when it would…

  At 25 years old, Hillary Rodham received her law degree from Yale. She began work at the Yale Child Study Center and published her first scholarly article, “Children Under the Law” in the Harvard Educational Review. Her boyfriend of two years, Bill, proposed. She turned him down. At 25 years old, I quit my…

It’s a story that my sister loves to tell.  “Remember that time you ran away to the library?”  She laughs about it, because she thinks she understands what it is to be me.  Or, rather, what it was like to be me, at eleven, nearly twelve, but going on thirty.  She laughs like she understands—and…

“Girls, make sure your clothes are ready for tonight,” our mother hollers down the stairs in her native tongue, Gujrathi. “Ok, Mom, we got it,” my sisters and I reply in English, as we finish our breakfast. Crisp gold and crimson leaves fall in our yard signaling that Navratri is here again.  Loud prayer music…

I set to iron out the wrinkles on your shirt. It’s your favourite one. Or perhaps, I should say ours. Like a lot of other elements, ‘yours’ became ‘ours’ when we tied the knot. Like how the train coaches are linked together with the engine; they make a pretty picture as they curve up and…

Disclaimer: This year I was wrongly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with Lamictal. My psychiatrist prescribed me a very low dosage and quickly – within four weeks – my dosage was multiplied by eight.   I’ve always been placid. Mom always says I was born thirty. I wasn’t active, I didn’t have a whole…