Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
In June, I called Mimi for her birthday. In a delighted voice, she told me that Mom had tied balloons to the mailbox that said, “Happy Birthday, Mimi.” She sounded like a child instead of an adult turning twenty-seven. My heart constricted with pity. I didn’t know how to respond. Read more
Four years later, Keith and I were married and living in New York City, and Jordan was no longer a “young bullock without blemish.” He still had his issues with school, and Mom and Dad transferred him from the suburban public high school the rest of us had attended to Read more
Nearly eight years after my father’s death, I received a phone call from the nurse I had hired at the end of his life. Jen was a kind and compassionate person, and she had been at his side when he passed away. Because of her other commitments, she was unable Read more
As I write this, a narcissist holds the highest office in our country. The narcissistic personality is one with which I am all too familiar, for I was raised by parents whose narcissism, like Trump’s, went hand-in-hand with crippling insecurity and a lack of impulse control. My mother in particular Read more
When my mother died, the vast weather of anger surrounding her like a force of nature dissolved and disappeared as if overnight. The change was astonishing. My father had his difficulties, but a constant display of anger was not one of them. In the old days, I might have gone Read more
On the second day of the new year, I was driving the back road from Millerton to our country home in Boston Corners. The sky was cloudy and overcast, and a dull whitish light hung over the landscape. Frost-tinged the dead straw-colored grasses in the fields at the sides of Read more
As the eldest in a large family, I grew up taking care of others. Watching my younger siblings, I learned to develop a sixth sense; I reserved a part of my attention to wander on that periphery where something might flare up among any one of them, at any time. Read more
My mother’s death was a shock at first. And then it was a relief. She was diagnosed with bone cancer on March 9, 2012. She died in the last minutes of March 21. How long she had had the bone cancer, her doctor would not suppose. What was known was Read more