November 13th, 2011
by Claire Hennessy
I awoke with a snort, squinting into the early morning sunshine. It was already hot as hell. My mouth tasted like the bottom of last night’s ashtray. I tasted hard, gritty sand against my teeth. My tongue moved around, looking for moisture. I lay there, too weary and apathetic to move. I closed my eyes. Time passed. The sun got hotter. My scorched skin stretched tight over my face, feeling like it would blister and crack at any moment. I could hear the gentle lapping of waves on the sand nearby. My parched throat closed as I craved a long, cold drink of Tacise. Continue… »
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October 16th, 2011
by Marianne Lonsdale
One night, after our toddler was asleep, I poured wine for my husband, Michael, and me. I told him that I needed more help with Nicholas. I took his hand and explained that I didn’t want to make it sound like he wasn’t doing his part. I knew I dominated taking care of Nicholas, and I wanted to change. I thought I sounded reasonable.
Michael blew up. He jerked his hand from mine and starting pointing his index finger at me. I was bossy and always correcting him. He wanted to do more but got tired of my interfering. But what really bothered Michael, what really upset him, was he felt he’d lost his wife, his lover and his best friend. For two years, he’d watched me disappear with our son. Continue… »
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September 28th, 2011
by Kimberley Kwok
The anniversary ringtone flashed on my screen demanding my attention.
“Remember,” it said. “Today.”
So damn sure of itself.
This isn’t the add-another-notch to the wedding band date, although I’m sure I’ve had a few snarky responses to those as well. This anniversary was a reminder of events that we feel obliged to honor even though honor is not something we like to give death credit for. Why would a mother want to remember her son’s death?
The countdown to his last day dovetails along with the broadcast demands of 9/11’s 10th anniversary the week before. But I’ve been anticipating September 18th since May. His birthday seems like a poor joke in light of our family’s holiday lineup: Mackenzie’s falls on Martin Luther King Day (her initials just happen to be MLK); Tyler’s is Labor Day (you can say that again) and Aaron’s falls on Memorial Day (not funny). Cameron came along three years after Aaron died on – naturally – the first day of spring. Our herald to life renewed. Continue… »
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September 21st, 2011
by Janine Kovac
A friend of mine celebrates her first wedding anniversary next week and has noticed that the universe has conspired against her. Total strangers tap her on the shoulder to say, “Remember, marriage is work.” Billboards, bus advertisements, email spam from moveon.org—everyone is telling her how hard marriage is. And that the work gets tripled once you add kids to the equation.
“Is it true?” she asked me, since I have been married seven years. Seven years! That’s as long as an Old Testament famine.
Yes, Laurie, it is true. Marriage is work. But here’s the trick: the implication of “marriage is work” (reads like a Marxist manifesto) is that if marriage is work, then the opposite of all this work is sipping mojitos in Tahiti, and reading the latest Oprah book club selection. I would argue that, yes, marriage requires a lot of effort, but there’s also great payoff. To me the polar opposite of being married is being comatose. A coma requires very little effort. I believe there’s also very little reward.
Put another way: a marriage is a garden. We can probably all agree that weeding a garden is hard work. But while one gardener notices how hot it is, how much her knees hurt, how many weeds there are, and what a thankless job it is—gripe, moan, whine—another gardener might notice how nice it is to be in the fresh air. That the feel of dirt in her fists is a sensual experience. That the garden is beautiful after it’s been weeded. Maybe she’s just proud to even have a garden.
You get the point.
(I must admit with all this gardening talk, that I haven’t weeded since 1981, back when I still had cooperative kneecaps. The metaphor is more real to me than the actual act of gardening.) Continue… »
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