Collecting bottles, tossing leftovers, taking out the garbage
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Kim Addonizio’s new memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress, is forthcoming from Viking/Penguin. She plays harmonica in the group Nonstop Beautiful Ladies.
Here’s a surprise: it turns out you can’t just walk into the assisted-living facility where your mother spent her final years, wrap her dead body in a sheet, and take her out into the woods to bury her.
We try to curtail “helper’s disease” as best we can. It seems to be rampant in our society: there’s a problem out there, I must do something about it, I have to go help. We’re not necessarily motivated by the best intentions. Sometimes we act out of our fear or guilt instead of a real desire to serve.
Our favorite game was called “Spy on Stella.” We loved to watch her when she thought she was alone and unobserved. It was our way of having power over her, for the few moments she dozed in the green chair in the living room or stood in the kitchen cooking, singing along with Jack Jones on the stereo.
During this holiday season, Sharon has gotten into the habit of counting how many of her ex-lovers show up at any given party.
Alice’s husband was a man constantly in motion, and now that he has returned as a blue jay he is not much different. If anything, he is more nervously energetic than ever.