Sibling Day. So that’s a thing is it? Well, here is what I have to say about that. I still don’t know what I did. I thought everything was fine. Mom died, leaving us full grown orphans. We buried her together, next to our father, each of us shouldering some burden of not being anyone’s…
Flight. Feel danger or pain approaching and retreat. Unless you’re evolutionary defective. Then you just lean right on into that pain. It’s a compulsion. Nearly out of my control. I feel it in my gut, a force tugging me from my center, off my feet and into the sharp end of whatever bad situation points at me. Especially…
I live in a town called Independence. Actually I live in the town next to it…but you know how old small towns bleed together over the century, connected by spattered little strip malls and one-story office buildings? We’ve got that going on. If my name were “Christmas Oneill,” I wouldn’t make a big deal…
I wrote this once before, a long time ago. I took it down. I’m ready to rewrite it now. It’s long, but it has to be. Settle in. When I ask my seven year old how much she remembers about grandma, who died when she was four, she always tries to please me with memories.…
I remember looking at the clock on the dashboard, and seeing that it was exactly 9:38 in the morning. And I was proud. I’d made it 33 minutes into the trip without wanting to pill-up. My two best friends here in town have my daughter over for sleepovers and play dates often. I seldom reciprocate, because…
Gus once said this about Christmas. “It’s a fire women start, and then they run around screaming because everything is on fire.” If women vanished from the earth Christmas would, for the most part, go with them. If the holiday survived I imagine it reverting to some sort of raucous medieval feast, with spit roasted…
I have a friend who is hobbled by her well-meaning mother. Her mother, we’ll call her Maude, is a woman used to being listened to and respected. She raised her children impoverished and single-handedly, and they become doctors and professors. I once complimented her ex-husband on how much I liked his daughter and he told…
*Originally written for Mother’s Day, 2013 My mom tended to make things up. Not lie. Fill in gaps. Pad. Fabricate.People said more passionate, endearing things in her memory. I was near enough to hear her meet a boy she used to help as a school-aid 20 years ago. She was tired, they only talked…
Many women and girls have the ability to look fantastic. To really lay it on, dress to the nines. They turn heads at the Italian restaurant, they get flirted with at the wedding reception. Even I could do it every now and then. But that’s not the same as being “professional grade” pretty. Like models and…
I am a twisted peg, and I owe so much happiness to that. So this is my analogy. Love is a pegboard, stretching Alice-in-Wonderland style to near infinity. You are a peg, individually carved. Your shape is determined by who you are, your entirety. The sexual attractiveness of your body, your rage, your humor, your ambition, your selfishness, your wit, your…
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