I guess there comes a time in every teacher’s life, if she taught as long as I did, when an event occurs that is so profoundly heart-rending that it stays with you for the rest of your life. The death of a student is one such event. The way one handles the situation with…
Category: Nonfiction
Issue 3.4 – Nonfiction
As I settle into a comfortable reading position, legs up on the bench, book in hand, and phone at a considerable distance away from me, three young women approach me. “We’re taking a survey for our class. Would you be interested in answering a few questions?” “Sure.” I state my name and consent to being…
Issue 3.3 – Nonfiction
First appeared in The Manifest-Station Even now, all these years later, I have a recurring dream about driving alone around Madison, lost and trying to find my way home. I am driving around hills, the lake always on one side. It all looks so familiar but I am not sure I am heading in…
Issue 3.2 – Nonfiction
I watched children as they climbed the ancient bedrock above the castle playground in Central Park; they scrambled over the enormous rock, reaching, pulling with their bare hands, digging their sneakers into crevasses, and pushing, hurling themselves up, the way my almost-four-year-old son Radek did whenever I brought him here. In the vast playground…
Issue 3.1 – Nonfiction
“Hi, Baby Girl! I’m home!” I scooped up my four-month-old after changing out of my scrubs. I’d only been gone a few hours, but I had at least two hours of charting ahead. I got some cuddles in before delving into my tablet to document wounds, blood sugars, and lab values from the…
Issue 2.5 – Nonfiction
I wasn’t a little girl who thought about marriage. My Barbie doll was a writer and nature lover who lived alone in the trees; miraculously free of mosquito bites. My Donny Osmond doll spied, took pictures, and wrote articles about how beautiful it was to see my Barbie (read: me) live naked and…
Issue 2.4 – Nonfiction
It was Mother’s Day in 2002 when in the service our pastor asked all mothers, grandmothers, and mothers-to-be to stand up and be recognized by the congregation, but I sat in the pew, shoulders dropped, looking at my feet, silently wishing them all to hell. It was in that dark, vanishing place where I…
Issue 2.3 – Nonfiction
The news was ablaze last week with the news of the rapper Eminem drawing a line in the sand through his freestyle video at the BET awards, insisting his fans choose between him and Trump. I completely related to and understand his actions. While I remain friends with people who have made the decision…
Issue 2.2 – Nonfiction
The light within me bows to the light within you. That is what I am expressing every time I place my hands together, palms and fingers touching, pointed up, in front of my heart. This is the namaskara mudra – gesture of adoration. I envision the Vietnamese Goddess of Mercy and Buddhist Bodhisattva Quan…
Issue 2.1 – Nonfiction
1. Our Neighbor, Our Enemy My mother and the Syrian lady next door were enemies. Theirs was a feud that excelled in the tactics of non-verbal intimidation. They practised their stares and their cold shoulders, and how best to turn one’s face away when they each saw the other approaching. We were amused and…
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