I have moved every few years since 1993. Each move is an opportunity to ruthlessly rid myself of Stuff. Over time I’ve noticed some trends that say a great deal about me– good and (charitably) less good. The Rule: If I haven’t used it in the past twelve months, it is trashed, recycled, or…
Category Archives: Write on Edge
Meeting my Sons’ Birthmother for the Third Time: The Pain of Not Adopting
Her name is Melanie and looking back, I see what little I understood about how enmeshed our lives would become when my husband and I adopted her baby boy in 2008 . I foolishly thought our paths had met again only briefly, in February 2010, when I called our adoption agency to see if Melanie…
Crime and Punishment: Un-becoming Infertile
“I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles,” [Raskolnikov] thought, with an odd smile.” Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky The challenge of infertility is not that you cannot bear children. The challenge of infertility is not allowing yourself to become your infertility. I sat on the plastic-topped exam table…
The Dragon: A memoir of trial by fire
Willingham Hall, Mercer University The third floor of the Baptist church-turned-classroom building in Macon, Georgia burned like the inside of a kiln, only hotter. The dragon had insulated it with hardcover books— totems to its intellect. Hot wasn’t sufficient for it. It required an inferno. I climbed each creaking wooden stair, listening to them whine under…
Hold The Bottom Down
First you played brass, man, Out front, uptown, high Notes and swing. Miles not Max. Dancing and light. We learned to duet. Horn popped scatted, sang. Strings strummed: blending gliding, winding, tight. Our sound hot, bold— two. Together harmonic. Unified front men In a two-man band. Children erupted. Wild discordant notes. Improvisation. Duet to quartet….
Just a Little Memoir Piece About Pee Pee
Phobias. Spiders, heights, speaking in public, pick your poison. Over my thirty-five years, I have accumulated a few. Some are pedestrian, not meriting mention, except when begging off a walk across Mile High Bridge, or running from a soon-to-be-former-friend trying to drag me onto a roller coaster. One phobia, however, is a bit less run-of-the-mill….
The Decision
Frank sat naked on the edge of the cast iron bathtub, hips swiveled out; his long, gangly legs, rooted to the rug. His back hunched over, causing his abdomen—thin as it was— to fall forward in milky folds. Even in winter, his neck, face, and arms were darker than the rest of him, pigment permanently…
