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FEATURE ESSAYS Main Feature –
Celebrate Mom Writer's Literary Magazine Moms write – we write all the time – notes for school, in the agendas, but we also are the most powerful women with words. Paula Schmitt has discovered this and recruited a group of moms to create Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine. Who are these women and who creates the magazine? Enjoy... Continue reading Celebrate Mom Writer's Literary Magazine Guest Features The Career I Never Knew I Always Wanted The banner was taped high over the chalkboard menu at my Miami high school. “Women Empowerment seminars to be held in the library.” We all went and pledged allegiance to Helen Reddy and stood at attention during her “I Am Woman” ballad. Part of our doctrine as believers was the certain knowledge that we are entitled to all that men hold dear. As a product of the sixties, matured in the seventies, I was led to believe I could not possibly be fulfilled as a woman unless I had a professional career, just like my brothers. I owed it to women throughout the world to venture out each morning, briefcase in one hand, heavily caffeinated coffee in the other, so I can fork over those taxes every payday, while visions of Norma Rae march through my head... Continue reading The Career I Never Knew I Always Wanted
Problems with Pigeons The banner was taped high over the chalkboard menu at my Miami high school. “Women Empowerment seminars to be held in the library.” We all went and pledged allegiance to Helen Reddy and stood at attention during her “I Am Woman” ballad. Part of our doctrine as believers was the certain knowledge that we are entitled to all that men hold dear. As a product of the sixties, matured in the seventies, I was led to believe I could not possibly be fulfilled as a woman unless I had a professional career, just like my brothers. I owed it to women throughout the world to venture out each morning, briefcase in one hand, heavily caffeinated coffee in the other, so I can fork over those taxes every payday, while visions of Norma Rae march through my head... Continue reading Problems with Pigeons
My Mother's Daughter "I could add a floor, and maybe seal it and nail that tin on the roof down and I really think I could live in it! I could make you dinner every night, we could build a tunnel for me to travel back and forth...it would be perfect!" Continue reading My Mother's Daughter
Searching for Matt Beams of sunlight pour through the prism hanging in our living room window. My son watches with fascination as streams of light cast a rainbow across the polished oak floor. Matt smiles and follows the dancing rays and flickering flashes of color. His fingers stretch to touch each beam, soothing him within a circle of warmth. He is autistic. Through his eyes, the world is a web of details to detangle and manage. Matt was missing. I could feel it in my gut. I rushed from the dining room through the front foyer to the living room desperate to spot him in his red Tasmanian devil T-shirt. The video was still on, but my 8-year-old son was not perched cross-legged in his usual style on the couch. Nor was he lying on the floor sideways, as often observed, with his head resting on his palm. I froze. The front door was ajar. I ran to the bay window, but Matt was nowhere in sight. I paused to take a deep breath, before checking every corner of the house... Continue reading Searching for Matt
The Triumph of Time Reading, for me, has at times been a slippery endeavor, often insatiable, seldom steady, always variable. Genres in which I have found myself could shift suddenly and unpredictably like a snake slithering through the sand, these twists and turns taking me on a gamut of literary explorations. Even as a child, I skated a figure eight, gliding between fiction and nonfiction, yearning to know the truths of life, but then going back to my favorite book of all: The Boxcar Children. Here, runaway siblings chilled milk in a babbling brook and called "home," an empty boxcar. A tale, no doubt, pulling at my own wanderlust instincts. Sadly, these stories and the Little Golden Books of my youth came and went long, long ago... Continue reading The Triumph of Time
Grieving Uterus Breanna is growing so quickly. Every week she outgrows something else and so I fold it for the last time and place it in a bag which will eventually be
given to some charity. Two days ago I found a bag with a pair of pink sheep
pajamas that my older daughter Hayley had worn; pajamas that were my
absolute favorite. When I finally found them I nearly cried because I'm
almost sure that they won't fit Breanna and she never even got to wear them.
Each time she does something new, some milestone or just something
awe-inspiring, I feel so proud and then I feel a little melancholy that I
will never again see my own child do X, Y, or Z for the very first time. Continue reading Grieving Uterus
Vision She's 17 going on 27. I gave her a Gaelic name. It means "a vision." She looks at me with scorn. It is so early in the morning and she is obviously not pleased to see the day arrive. Continue reading Vision
Hypnosis Triumph Ever since I can remember, my middle daughter, Anna, who is now twenty-one, has had a rather serious phobia. Basically, she’s afraid of hospitals, the sight of blood, and white lab coats—anything related to illness. My readings taught me that her type of phobia was rarely inherited, but frequently connected to a learned behavior originating from some negative experience. After much reflection, I was initially unable to peg what that experience might have been. Continue reading Hypnosis Triumph
Still Life with Sons The mother whale keeps perfect pace with her baby—some baby—dripping tons of sleek black flesh. They move in tight unison, mother and child, through the lazy water. Up comes a flash of black and then down to where we cannot know them. Continue reading Still Life with Sons
Coffee Shop My daughter Anna and I were sitting at the window counter at Starbucks looking out through the drizzly twilight at 57th Street. We were tired from traipsing around New York; we'd explored the Village, logged an hour or so in the tiny Oscar Wilde Bookshop there, walked down to Chinatown then back up to Central Park. This Starbucks, a block from our hotel, was as far as we could drag our spent selves that evening which was just as well; we weren't traveling on a budget that would cover theater tickets. Exhausted and giddy we had lapsed into what's recently become our favorite game: we name things. "Let's name things we hate," Anna yawned, wringing out her tea bag. "Okay." I was pulling books from my bag and setting them on the counter. "Umm, Secret Santas, pelvic exams, corsages…" Continue reading Coffee Shop
Saying Goodbye Today, I will lose a child. Not in the horrible, never-going-back way of a death. Not in the terrible, why-did-this-happen-to-us way of a terminal illness. Not even in the how-could-I-have-said-that way of an irreconcilable argument. No, this is more common and prosaic. Millions of people have been through this, so why can’t I handle it? Today, Jennifer, my daughter and oldest child, is going away to college. Of course, she’ll be back for holidays and vacations, but it will never be the same. Her time away will change her, as permanently and indelibly as any other life experience. A birth. A death. A marriage or a divorce. A new job in a new city... Continue reading Saying Goodbye
The Great Toddler Inquisition “Mommy, why is my tongue always wet?” The question seeps from the back seat forward out of the mouth of my inquisitive three year old, Isabelle. I glance in the rear view mirror as she reaches into her mouth with both fists and clutches her tongue. Soon her tiny hands are sopping wet, too. “Well, honey, I suppose it has to do with saliva helping your food go down and the production of your digestive juices.” “What’s slaliva?” Isabelle counters wiping her slimy paws on her shirt. It’s obvious the path we are heading down. I have mistakenly engaged in the Great Toddler Inquisition... Continue reading The Great Toddler Inquisition
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