In the back of her closet, behind the clothes, next to the dresser, were two shoe boxes, each of which held a pair of peau de soie-wrapped stilettos, one pair cream, the other bright kelly green, both size 7 AAAA. I’m certain about the cream colored pair, which were her wedding shoes. I’m less sure…
Category Archives: About my mother
Happy.
After her fifth or sixth miscarriage, my mother, resigned to the reality that a baby might not be in the cards, went with my father to the animal shelter and came home with a puppy. Without much debate they named the small, black-and-white ball of fur Happy, partly because the dog’s mouth was shaped in…
Goodnight, bookstore.
I met Martha Stewart there, though not in person of course. Her rosy cheeks shone at me from the display table by the east-facing door. I don’t remember what year it was, only that it was the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that I was with my mother, and that I was in my…
The living and the dead.
This may seem disjointed; that’s simply the way things are. My friend Harriet, the Harriet who is very much alive, is a quilter. She sews the most beautiful quilts (and other things, too) and has the best sewing adventures to tell, stories I would share except that they are hers and not mine. I mention…
A story in a suitcase.
I am wearing a set of devices that I affectionately, without a trace of affection, call SPANX for teeth. If you are a man then this reference is possibly lost on you, though I suspect if you are one of the regulars here then you are the sort of man who has a woman friend…
Life begins at 50.
The third thing she told me was that life begins at 50. She said this just to me, out of earshot from my traveling companion, as she was tucking me back into the driver’s seat, right before she said, “I love you,” which is what she always said at the end. We had been together…
Inhale, exhale.
If there is a dish more emblematic of my cooking story than cheese soufflé, I can’t think what it would be. By now you’ve heard this tale, or bits of it, many times: my mother, who trained herself first by watching and later by reading, trained me to cook by virtue of the fact that…
Summer 1980.
What began with The Shining, released on Memorial Day weekend, ended, a week after Labor Day, with Ordinary People. In between were Caddyshack, The Blue Lagoon, Airplane!, Brubaker, Urban Cowboy and He Knows You’re Alone. It was the summer of Luke and Laura, of Funkytown, Magic and Sailing. The United States led a 65-country boycott…
