Half a life later, it is easy to look back and say that the mistakes of my first marriage were at the roots, failures of imagination. At 20, I wanted to leave home but couldn’t work out a plan on my own, so I said yes when my first love asked me to marry […]

The bright yellow paint coating the concrete still holds the heat of the sun after dinner, but the backs of my legs aren’t burning when I boost myself up. In my version of this memory, a cousin sits next to me. We are in the park, straddling the largest of the multi-colored construction pipes that […]

At the beginning of the year, my plan for this blog was to alternate between stories from my memoir in progress and excerpts from the copybook I used 30 years ago to write myself out of a failed marriage. Lately, memories of my mother are demanding my attention. She’d appreciate the disruption. She often reminded […]

If the person you love makes the world seem larger, you’re on to something. If they shrink your world, beware. (Inspired by Madeleine L’Engle) What you love about someone can also make you crazy. Be sure you can live with the flip side. You cannot be responsible for someone else’s happiness. If they tell you […]

  My mother died four years ago today. When she was alive, I could not make her happy. As a child, I was always lagging behind, slow to master shoelaces and scissors, reluctant to give up naps. As I grew older and sharper, I was too curious, too outspoken for a girl. After the misadventures […]

It was a Thursday evening, according to my old notebook, and I had been packing to spend a week without my husband while house sitting for friends. Neither of us knew whether I would go through with the planned time away, or what would happen when the break was over. We were watching a popular […]

  Except for a single half-sheet of paper issued on the day I was released from prison, I have no official documentation of my time in Guatemala. In the intervening years, I have spoken about my experience with journalists who have written about Latin America, as well as with professors in the United States and […]

  Winter 2016 A story is emerging, a continuation of last month’s, The Woman I Once Was; it is a look back at the essential fault line in my life. I have been taught to ask myself when writing, Why now? The simplest answer may be that this year marks the point where the two halves of […]

January 15, 1986 7:25 p.m. Pittsburgh International Airport   “It must be in my nature, for anyone who gave me so much as a sardine could obtain anything from me.” –St. Teresa of Avila. Was I carrying this quote on a folded slip of paper, waiting like a courier to slip the message to another […]