As a kid, I played for hours with my Smurfs under the dining room table, while my mother clacked away on the typewriter above my head. My favorite Smurf was Jokey, with his goofy, indestructible grin and the large yellow gift box he held that exploded in the faces of his unsuspecting victims. It was […]
There was a photo of me I never knew about that hung in my father’s house outside of Bonn for nearly thirty years. He lived in this house with his wife and seven children, filling it with memories, laughter, and love each day. The photo was taken during my father’s only visit to New York […]
I’m sitting by your bed holding soaps and handkerchiefs– the only gifts I could think of to bring a dying man. It’s quiet– both of us write poetry and are no good at small talk. We are straining for language. Your English is half-textbook, half-forgotten; my German slow and stilted, like that of a young […]
Once when I was eight years old, my hair caught on fire. My older sister saved my life by shoving me out the front door and burying my head in the snow. We were never close, thanks to an imaginary line my mother had drawn between the obedient, dependable daughter (me) and the obstinate, wild […]
It turns out all access points to Multnomah Falls are closed because of the forest fires that have been raging for the past six weeks. Some kid setting off firecrackers in the woods. Carol, the 60-something-year-old highway worker guarding the exit, peers sympathetically into the car and suggests that we check out the tide pools […]
I can still name all the players on the New York Mets back in 1986, the year they won the World Series– Sid Fernandez, Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, Dwight Gooden, Mookie Wilson…. It was the same year we moved back to New York; the year my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. It was […]