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Tag: Memories

Memories

The Stocking

I have pulled it out of the red and green-topped box each year since my divorce.   The sole stocking left among my divorce residue  – a reminder of my divided family.  It is the stocking purchased when the dream of my future family was thriving.  I bought four stockings together, perhaps foolishly, during the pregnancy of my first daughter.  I was hopeful from the beginning she would have a sibling.  The first Christmas after she was born, I had the stockings monogrammed “Mom,” “Dad,” and “Anna.”  I left the last blank until the time came that eventually our Sophia would
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Memory Keeper

I felt a little embarrassed when the movers asked where the box with the wedding dress should be placed.  And then even more embarrassed when my landlord went to replace the carpet in the basement before I had fully moved out and had to move a small pile of belongings from the basement to the main floor – glaringly included in the mix of a handful of things was my giant and heavy leather wedding album. (Do I say former wedding album?) I had not packed it. It remained in the pile of items that I did not know what
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Remaking May Memories

May is a month of meaningful memories for me. Starting on the very first of May, I remember the days my children celebrated May Day by making tiny baskets to hang for neighbors in our tree lined block. They delighted to hang their surprise on the doorknob, ring the bell, and race away. As a girl growing up Catholic in my Little Italy neighborhood, May was the month to honor the Virgin Mary. Her shrine on my bedroom dresser was an inverted shoe box covered with a lace doily where her veiled figure in her blue and pink gown stood
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Merry Memories

My father died on Christmas day. This Christmas, like the one thirty years ago, I will host my family in my cozy home with candles burning and my tree gloriously trimmed. Unlike that year, my nursing newborn is now the 30 year old flying home from New York before he heads off to India. My home is now an apartment instead of a house. There will be no husband to cohost the holiday party, and the widow in the house will not be my mother but will be me. It’s impossible for me to not connect holidays with losses, even
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