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Hurricane Ralph

It’s been raining all day, as remnants of the fourth hurricane to hit Florida this year sweep through the South. Some see the storms as an act of divine retribution, as if God, still irritable at the way votes were miscounted in the 2000 presidential election, had decided to hold Florida’s head underwater to make a point. I don’t find the suffering of Floridians who lost homes and loved ones amusing (though I wouldn’t have minded if God had just invited Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Secretary of State Katherine Harris out for a little swim).

Drama Queen

We all want to be cared for out of pure love, but love does not come pure in this world. It comes stained, and sometimes stinking of urine, as her bedroom did near the end, when her catheter was leaking. In this world, love comes mixed with pity and anger and guilt and all those other less-than-noble emotions that we are not supposed to have. We should thank God love shows up at all.

This One’s For Me

All this makes me sound selfish. I have had to make room for this selfishness inside me, to accept the fact that alongside the Sue who cares deeply, grieves excessively, and fights fiercely for her siblings is the Sue who seethes beneath her horsehair shirt. People like Mother Teresa must practice selflessness until there is no self left to practice on.

The Weight Of Memory

At Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, they hand out maps of the store, as if it were a forest you might get lost in. My mother is looking for a novel; I want something that will help me identify the birds and trees of the Northwest. Oregon is much more lush than I remember; its green makes California look brown. My mother grew up in Portland but doesn’t recall the names of things. I lived here until the age of seven.

Political Paralysis

Years before I had been stricken by a debilitating illness. Perilymph fistula’s symptoms are like those of multiple sclerosis. On some days I was functional. On others — and I could never predict when these days would strike — I was literally paralyzed. I couldn’t leave the house; I could barely stand up.

Secret Smoker

I first smoked in the spring of 1970, when I was sixteen years old. I found a pack of cigarettes in the hallway of my high school, the Bronx High School of Science. It was a box of Marlboros. I hesitated for a moment, then reached for it. The pack was more than half full.

The Beauty Of Second Avenue

The foyer was home to my mother’s books but a place of exile for my brother and me. Around the time I was eleven and he seven, my mother began banishing us, singly, to the foyer without dinner in fits of unpredictable, unfathomable rage.

Elopement

When I was fifteen, my father nailed my bedroom window shut to keep me from running off in the night. Almost forty years later, my sisters and I had to put him in a home with door alarms and special window locks to keep him in. Like me, he took off anyway.

At Hell’s Gate

A Soldier’s Journey From War To Peace

I remember the day I left for my military service. My father drove me to the bus station in Erie, Pennsylvania. I had a Boy Scout suitcase with my name written on it in black Magic Marker. My father bought me a ticket and left me there to wait for the bus. No goodbye hug, no handshake, no parting words.

Dancing On Jim Morrison’s Grave

Before leaving, I had vowed I would not go looking for Jim Morrison’s grave. The idea of making such a pilgrimage at my age struck me as vaguely ridiculous. Yet there I was, on my last morning in Paris, wandering mapless in the sprawling necropolis, looking for the tombstone of a singer I had barely thought of in almost thirty years.