Tag: family
Searching For Home
At night, after my day as a spice merchant concludes, the smell of garlic and onion dust coats my clothes and body like a new skin, as though I am someone different. I do not shower before visiting my parents, my scent melds with their age and confinement. My mother Read more
They Could Guillotine a Baby’s Hand: A Foster Mother’s Story
The narrow wooden bench creaks and bows every time someone sits next to me. It arcs so deeply when a heavy man sits in the very middle, two feet away from my tight clasp of the built-in armrest at the end, that I fear the old wooden fibers are spreading Read more
A Branch Removed
Of our family tree you are a branch life’s cruel disposition removed from us when I was young; memories of you faded as years lapsed by the way a tree forgets leaves it shed over the years. Leaving me with stories my mother tells about the love you had for Read more
When the Parent Becomes the Child: And Then There Was One
I’ve never minded solitude. For a writer, it’s a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a particular kind of loneliness. —Laurie Graham My mother is leaving me. Her mind allows her to tell me about my favorite stuffed animal when I was three, my Effalunt, but Read more
Kissing the Patriarch Goodbye
It’s been over six years now, since I last spoke to my father: mid-summer, July 15th, 2014. I was in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he was lying on a gurney at a funeral home — dead as a doornail. To hide the incisions of his autopsy, the back Read more
My Mother in the Afterlife
When my mother died, the vast weather of anger surrounding her like a force of nature dissolved and disappeared as if overnight. The change was astonishing. My father had his difficulties, but a constant display of anger was not one of them. In the old days, I might have gone Read more
The Woman Who Wants To Change How We Look At Teen Pregnancy And Teen Parenthood: Rosemary Oglesby-Henry
Rosemary’s Babies Co. is a non-profit organization founded in 2013 in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Rosemary Oglesby-Henry with the specific purpose of helping teen parents navigate the treacherous and often frightening world of teen parenthood. Armed with the mantra of being able to help change the life trajectory of young parents Read more