On writing fiction
“I don’t need you. You need me. … I’m the mother. You’re the child.”
My mother’s statement to men when I was around ten or eleven years old echoed those of Danny DaVito, who played the father of the character, Matilda, played by Mara Wilson in the movie, Matilda.
“I’m big, you’re small. I’m strong, you’re weak. You need me. I don’t need you.”
My mothers’s words hurt.
Not until now
Of Being Needed, Appreciation and Matilda … Read More »
My mother taught me many things about love. One is that love allows one to step outside of her or himself and see the other person’s perspective, particularly if that other person is your child.
As women we are expected to make room for everyone at the table even if that means we do not get to sit down.
As a woman, who is also the mother of three daughters, my
Of Mothers, Daughters and Generosity of Spirit … Read More »
My greatest fear as my mother’s daughter was not that I would die, but rather that I would live.
It takes strength to live, courage to wake up each day and face someone that you are so unsure of.
You do not know whether they love you, and yet they say they do.
This is the ambiguity that leads to the
Of Ambivalence, Loss, and What Seemed Retribution … Read More »
The weekend following the accident my daughter would tell me of how on his arrival, the woman’s husband offered to and helped my daughter move the boxes of books, copies of my novels, from the back of my SUV, its back window blown out by the impact of the crash, into the trunk of my daughter’s car.
The woman, by then had
Of A Jeep Wranger, Corporal Punishment and Compassion … Read More »
Days after the accident I would later recall the smoothness of the woman’s pink skin–the woman who had slammed her SUV into the back of mind–its lack of lines and crows feet, all of which told me she had not reached the age at
Of Misery, No Baby Seats and Shylo, Our Protective Chihuahua … Read More »
I abandoned the idea of driving myself to the hospital as I had when the mentally ill son of a minister driving around Berkeley and shooting women, had fired two bullets into my left wrist and two others into my neck. I had been thirty-four years old then, nearly 20 year younger and with no previous concussion.
Three decades of marriage to a surgeon and my experience working as a medical technologist in a blood bank had taught me much about recognizing your limits.
On hearing the woman speak the words, “ … husband … I’m going to call him,” I had thought
Of Bullets, Hospitals, and Revisionist Historians … Read More »
by miskin69 (cont.) I had been about to enter the bathroom when my mother approached me with the inch-thick padded bearing her last name. “You will go to church with me,” she stated. “No, I won’t.” I sat upon the carpet and crossed my legs like a
Of Companionship, Black and Blue, and The Buddhist Monk’s Pyre … (continued …) Read More »