My mom says I was born tense. Tense and intense. When she tells the story of how I was born, amidst the drama and gesticulation, I feel a little sad to know that I am this child she speaks of. When she talks about the way she could hear me screaming day and night in the nursery just a few doors down, and of her helplessness in coming to my rescue, I feel the aftermath both of her helplessness and of my own. It's a feeling I can't seem to shake. When my incessant wailing finally subsided and my parents were able to hold me, as my mom goes on to tell the story, I still could not calm my nervous body; She speaks of the way I would never relax, how even in sleep she would watch me and my curled toes and clenched fists. And I have this vision of my young mother's eyes, peering in on her sleeping infant the way I imagine every parent does. The way I have watched my own daughter sleepily after midnight feedings when my eyes won't close again. And I think of the way my mother must have viewed me, that as she watched me sleep, she must have cried for so much love...--read more >>

1. Cross Hairs

The proof is there in the two blue lines. A baby blue plus sign confirms I don't have the flu like I'd hoped. I don't feel joy. I feel sick and not just from what I now know to be morning sickness. To me those faint blue lines look like cross hairs. I turn off the light in my bedroom, lay face down on my bed and wish it to go away. My husband walks in and asks me what I'm doing. No words come out as I hand over the white EPT stick.

"You are?"

"Yes." --read more >>

I consider my first marriage to be the friendship I have with Lori. We have been friends for over fifteen years, which is a lifetime in my transient world. We met while in college and immediately fell in love. We went out for margaritas one night and talked for hours. I came home to my boyfriend at the time and said, "Lori and I just fell in love under the full moon." This made him a bit nervous. --read more >>

My daughter strides through the doors of St. Something or Other, sits herself sideways in a seat at a low table, and starts to color. So begins her life as a school-aged child. Consequently, this moment also serves to kick the life out of my five year stint as her fulltime stay-at-home mom.

Well then. What now?--read more >>

2003

Sometimes when I get an idea for a story I do this thing called clustering. I write down my main topic in the center of a yellow legal pad and go from there. Today's word is CRACK. I am lying in my bed, head propped up on several small pillows. I shake my pen epileptically so the blue ink will continue to flow. One by one, I squiggle lines that extend from the center circle outward, then write a word or set of words and circle it. These extensions resemble sperm trying to escape of the edges of the paper into some unknowing sea. In the center of these balloons - How Life Was, The First Hit, Money, Dealers, Laptop, Diamond Rings, Watch, Treatment Center, Sex, Self Care, House, Friends, Jeff, Kids, School, Writing, Car, Bills. I daydream, wondering if crack addicts ever quit looking at white specks on the ground thinking it is some dope that they dropped. I went to my son's 7th grade conference yesterday and I saw white specks on the ground in the middle school parking lot. To me, they looked like crack. Who would be dropping crack in the middle school parking lot? No, it couldn't be crack. The rain and snow would have washed it away. --read more >>

Susan: I've always liked reference books (I am, after all a librarian). When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was the Girl Guides Handbook (when we were in Canada) & later the Girl Scouts Handbook. I went back & read those even after I stopped doing the scouting thing. They were nice reference for all sorts of random things that struck my fancy & I could sit down & read a little bit then wander off to play & use what I just learned about (or not). --read more >>