When I was a toddler, I named my hands “Turner” and “Bobby.” Turner was my dominant right hand, the one used to access closed doors and cupboards. My parents say I blamed “Turner” when I spilled a glass of mi […]

Carol Jeffers is an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
“Stephanie wanted you to have her eyes,” her sister Susie said. “Please say you’ll take them.” That was in 2018, the second ti […]

The following is a conversation with Karin Cecile Davidson, whose first novel, Sybelia Drive, is being published this fall by Braddock Avenue Books (October 6th).
Sybelia Drive is a Vietnam-era novel that tells […]

Toward the evening of the night I thought my mother was dying, the aide, who stayed with mom during the day, told me mom had been asleep for twenty-four hours and would not wake up. She sent me a picture of my […]

Mary Alice Hostetter is an Honorable Mention in Streetlight Magazine’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
The first thing I noticed was the sign. My mother and I were driving back from getting corn meal at the mill, and […]

When we held our essay/memoir contest last spring, we had such a wealth of wonderful entries, it was very hard to pick the winners. I think we did a good job—certainly the best we could—but in the process we […]

Billie Hinton is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
I’m holding the reins of a twelve-hand half-Shetland pony when I get the call. My daughter hops into the saddle, I r […]

Amy Stonestrom is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
A strange February morning, gray sky lined with tangerine. Ten degrees. From my spot in the front seat, bursts of flame […]

Richard Key is the 1st place winner of Streetlight Magazine’s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest
Honeybees are swarming outside my home office under the eaves of the roofline. I would say they are hovering like tiny […]

When self-isolation measures were first enacted, five-year-old Vivian seemed excited about the whole thing. A new experience, unique to this time and place. She was playing with her mom, she yelled from her porch, […]

The visit was long overdue. At my wife Margie’s suggestion, I decided to do something about it.

So, on a summer day that was forehead-dripping hot with a steely blue sky, the two of us strolled in shorts and s […]

Daniel and I had done a lot of preparation for labor, I thought, but I never considered that it would start during the night.

I had pictured it many times and it was exclusively a daytime event. In fact, it […]

Not long ago, I walked along a rustic road that wound its way through a thickly forested area, taking in the sounds and sights of nature. Eventually the growth of trees thinned out and I came upon a somewhat […]

Just as we were hunkering down in the midst of this global emergency, we received the last dozen or so entries for the 2020 Streetlight Essay/Memoir contest. That was a happy distraction! And this is too.

None […]

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 […]

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 pa […]

The other day I heard somebody use the phrase, “the dead of winter,” and I thought, wow, it surely is. Punxsutawney Phil to the contrary—nor yet the strangely benign weather we’ve been having here in central […]

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 “b […]

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 […]

Like most people, I have done things that I wish I had not done, but it seems rare that something I am sorry I did is linked inextricably to something else I am glad to have done.

Growing up in a middle-class […]