Suprise Me

If the house is ever on fire I pray these make it out safely. Admittedly unprepossessing, they are my childhood stuffed toys. The doll I named Margie after my older cousin whom I thought the most beautiful of girls, and Rory, cause elephants roar, get it? Um, right. Mom made the little dress for Margie… Read More

Who are you? Is the you you think you know authentic? Do you examine who you are, the portrait you portray, the person we’ve all come to know and believe it’s you?   Can you fly yet?   Does your consciousness expand on every level? Can you slither through solid walls manipulating your molecules? Can… Read More

Through the rough tides of time, through storms and pleasant weather, you guided this little boat of mine, your precious daughter... Read More

I love this Retrospect site, and was especially touched by this prompt. When I saw Betsy’s posting, with the photo of her grandmother’s candlesticks, I wanted to share a photo of my own: the candlesticks I have from my own grandmother. They’re almost identical. My grandmother was given these Shabbos candlesticks on her wedding day… Read More

Hermine’s Morning Joe I happen to be a tea drinker,  but I do like the smell of coffee brewing,  and when the coffee smells especially good I think of my wonderful mother-in-law Hermine. My mother was a good cook,  but Hermine was an extraordinary one.   I,  on the other hand,  never prided myself on… Read More

“There would have been no rescue here!” The fire marshal held my arm as fiercely as my gaze, neither of us paying attention to the breast milk leaking across my shirt. I tore my eyes away from his and tried again to look at the house, still reeking of wet char, a crazy perimeter of crime tape separating the ugly remains of our home from the gorgeous June morning. Read More

Neither the nondescript stores and the black wilderness of the Meadowlands on one side, nor the dark cemetery dotted with barely visible white tombstones on the other, gave me any assistance. Read More

Two children’s books — one from the middle of the 19th Century, the other from the end of the 20th, have a special place in my heart, for different reasons. One was a gift to my grandmother from her mother; the other I read to my daughter almost a hundred years later. My favorite children’s… Read More

I don’t know if I’ve cheated at cards. I never progressed much beyond ‘go fish’ and blackjack with the deck of fifty-two. I can’t remember if I ever kept excessive change dealt out by a storekeeper. I found $400 dollars in tightly rolled bills in a baking soda can, stashed in the demolished darkroom of… Read More

To play the “Gas Station Game,” you began by taking turns choosing different brands of gas, the way you might pick players on a pickup baseball or touch-football team. He would pick first—that was just the rule—and he would always pick Standard, Read More