Category Archives: Essay/Memoir

Essay/Memoir

Side Effects by Philip Lawton

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Photo of spines of books on shelf
 

The day before I turned 40, a Sunday toward the end of the merry month, we went for a drive from our home in West Hartford to the town of Litchfield, Connecticut. I was at the wheel, my wife navigating, our children, a thirteen-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, on the back seat of a dark red minivan. I had a lot on my mind, my job was exceedingly demanding, my father, gravely ill, but it was a glorious afternoon for an unhurried Memorial Day weekend trip to that scenic part of the state. We … Continue reading Side Effects by Philip Lawton →

Essay/Memoir

What We Forget by Tom Coates

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Picture of American flag overlooking river
 

I remember the moment I knew my grandmother’s mind was slipping away. My cousin leaned in to give her a kiss and say goodnight. “Goodnight, Dahh-ling,” she replied as only she could, and then, to no one in particular, “Who was that?” Granted, the woman had nine kids and eighteen grandchildren, and she may have had a rum punch or two, but still, it struck me. Two years later, a few days before Christmas, I sat with her on a bench under a blanket and a blue winter sky in the field behind the old Virginia … Continue reading What We Forget by Tom Coates →

Essay/Memoir

The Fairest of the Fair by Anthony J. Mohr

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Photo of Hollywood sign
 

Not until age seventy did I recall a place I’d never been—the Teenage Fair. Launched in 1961, it became a so-called “mini world’s fair for teenagers” which featured, according to one of its newspaper ads, a “battle of the beat, model cars, drag strip racing, dance contests, custom car caravan, surfing movies, Miss Teen International Pageant, harmony folk festival, movie, TV, radio, and record guest stars, judo, beauty clinics, thrill shows, photo and home movie expositions, fabulous fashion shows, dream cars of the future, bands and drill teams and nonstop record hop.” Also, someone told … Continue reading The Fairest of the Fair by Anthony J. Mohr →

Essay/Memoir

The City of My Birth by Margaret Erhart

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Skyscrapers against blue sky
 

The city of my birth, as seen from above, is a ragged landscape of canyons. Highrises, lowrises, the steeple of an old brick church. Streams of yellow taxicabs where forests of hickory and chestnut once grew. To the north lies the green rectangle of Central Park, the woody heart of this metropolis. There, red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons prey on pigeons and squirrels and sometimes an errant Chihuahua. To the west, across the Hudson River, the fair state of New Jersey. To the east the bridges that stitch the island of Manhattan to the boroughs … Continue reading The City of My Birth by Margaret Erhart →

Essay/Memoir

Split Decision by Michael Olenick

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Photo of hand ringing doorbell
 

The New Year’s Eve party was near Times Square in the building then housing Show World Center. You sat on my friends’ laps and mine inquiring about our salaries. John had the features of a Jones Beach lifeguard, which, coincidentally, he was. He was neither dumber nor smarter than he looked. Brian was the company ladies’ man, who we had nicknamed Kraven the Hunter. Those descriptions are as dated as the large-lensed glasses we all wore. Another Long Islander, he had studied medieval history at Wichita State because he wanted to get as far away … Continue reading Split Decision by Michael Olenick →

Essay/Memoir

On Arizona Highways by Jennifer Cummings

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Photo of empty road, going toward mountains
 

There’s a scuba certification center in the middle of the desert, promising a deep heated pool. There’s a billboard with a picture of an elderly couple smiling for the camera, the woman wrapping her arms around the man’s shoulders from behind, with bold white text declaring, “E.D.? Keep the love going!” There’s a prison complex that’s all dirt and barbed wire, directly across from a shopping center advertising multiple designer brands and large stores with mission-style architecture. I stare from the window of a bus as they pass. I’ve driven this highway—which connects my college … Continue reading On Arizona Highways by Jennifer Cummings →

Essay/Memoir

Storms by Emily Walling

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Photo of dark clouds with sun breaking through over water
 

If you’re standing on a pink sand beach in the Caribbean, the sun burning your back and monstrous thunder speaking to you across the salt water, you should probably listen. I should’ve listened. The sky roared at least half a dozen times, but I mentally shoved cotton into my ears. Bliss and a light day misguided my judgement, the storm rolling in quickly. My husband bleeding on the beach. Carl and I spent the day in the town of St. George on the northern part of Bermuda. We went in and out of the shops, … Continue reading Storms by Emily Walling →

Essay/Memoir

Haunted By Halloween by Priscilla Melchior

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Close-up photo of group of orange mini-pumpkins
 

I despise Halloween. I don’t wish ill of others. I hand out candy. I praise fairies and princesses, soldiers and supermen. I even humor parents who dress infants as vegetables or baby birds—but all the while, I’m inwardly rolling my eyes, wishing the night to be done. I blame this on one childhood Halloween: the night that penicillin stood between me and perfection. This was during the late 1950s, before every drug and grocery store sold plastic masks and costumes. We dressed in whatever getups we could find, and I had waited a lifetime, I … Continue reading Haunted By Halloween by Priscilla Melchior →

Essay/Memoir

Work in Progress by Philip Lawton

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Photo of statue of Kierkegaard
 

My wife wants me to write my own obituary. Write a draft in the third person and revise it as many times as it takes to produce a short, readable account of a life that will make sense, if at all, only in retrospect, when a theme or at least a pattern might emerge from the confusion of places I’ve lived, schools I’ve attended, jobs I’ve held. Put it in the safe with my other end-of-life papers, the insurance policies, list of passwords, living will, last will. And no, she stipulates, I may not make … Continue reading Work in Progress by Philip Lawton →

Essay/Memoir

Lucky? by Christine Holmstrom

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Photo of knives stuck on magnetic strip
 

In Alice Sebold’s book Lucky, a memoir of her brutal rape as a college freshman, a policeman tells her she was lucky. He meant she was fortunate to have been raped and beaten rather than being raped and murdered. I was lucky too—luckier than Alice Sebold in that I’d never been raped despite taking risks in my teen years and twenties—hitchhiking, getting shit-faced drunk in bars, inviting men I barely knew into my home. And then at thirty, I’d been hired as a correctional officer—prison guard—at San Quentin, the infamous men’s maximum-security prison. Working at … Continue reading Lucky? by Christine Holmstrom →