Skip to content

Month: November 2019

  1. Home
  2. Archives: November 2019

November 2019

Do or Dream

November 22, 2019 /
By the time I was thirteen I’d concluded that dreaming would not get me that hot pink paisley swimsuit with ruffles on display in the junior department of the Brandeis Department store downtown. I’d been babysitting for years and knew that only money from my summer nanny job and a layaway plan would. Instead of dreaming, I set goals and made plans. Set a goal to go to college. Plan to finish in three years. Set a goal to have a 100 people protest. Plan a march and get them there. Set a goal to throw a party. Plan the
Read More

Taught by Time and Tim

November 15, 2019 /
His rail thin body looked childlike under the sheets. At 35 his once muscular body could no longer stand without someone holding him up.  AIDS was about to take his life. The lessons I learned from my brother Tim that November were lost on me then. 25 years later, I see. I didn’t know that learning how to pull back the plunger on a syringe to the precise centimeter or how to manage a morphine pump would be essential skills when the man I would marry three years later was on his death bed. I didn’t know there was a
Read More

Complicated Confirmation

November 8, 2019 /
I dress in my Sunday best. I arrive in time to take a seat next to her mother and grandmother.  I tuck the narrow gold satin ribbon into the page for hymn #483. Simultaneously I’m an outsider and I am at home. It is confirmation day for young Sophia, whom I have known since she was born. She walks slowly down the aisle. Covering her floor-length red robe is a white cape with a red cross and  “PHILOMENA”  in big block letters of red felt. The organ fills  Saint Cecilia’s Cathedral as the procession of the baptized now prepare to
Read More

Influencer

November 1, 2019 / ,
Flowers on the altar, photos of loved ones, food that was their favorite—Dia de Los Muertos arrives each November 1 and we celebrate the “Day of the Dead” with friends. We honor those we have loved and lost. We take turns sharing stories and memories of those who’ve left this earth, but their impact remains. Tonight my friend Bill will open his latest showing of art. It will include paintings of those he has loved and lost. Among them will be John, my husband who died eight years ago. John was old enough to be Bill’s father. Had John not
Read More

Archives