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Distant Signals

Dad always gave elaborate instructions on how to use things. Most of Dad’s instructions were negative, as though the right way to do things would occur to one eventually if all the ways to do it wrong could be enumerated and cautioned against.

Redemption

A chain-link ID bracelet, a chipmunk, a missing knife

The Blizzard Of 1959

As night falls the February blizzard slips through the streets and avenues, to Montreal’s outlying districts, to Pierrefonds and the last line of houses on Pierre Lauzon, where the backyards give way to the eastern woods.

Talk

The sound of air expanding in my chest cavity and then being forced past the catgut of my vocal cords — that’s the sound my mother heard. It was a frightening, ugly sound, but the grief was pure and clean. Against the thickness of it, the viscosity, my mother would segue from soothing words into stories.

Mothers & Daughters

Remembering slights and fights, going horseback riding, swimming with dolphins

Thinking Outside The Classroom

An Interview With Zenobia Barlow

Many children who weren’t excelling in the classroom have suddenly become academic superstars, because they have aptitudes — kinesthetic, spatial, musical, interpersonal — that tend to emerge more successfully outside the classroom. When you give kids rich and varied contexts, they rise to a level of excellence you might not have anticipated.

How To Prosper During The Coming Bad Years

In the summer of 1979, I fell ruinously in love with a coltish, athletically robust Greek girl of fifteen named Nicole Liarkos . When I think of her now (which isn’t very often), I always imagine her poolside, her creamy caramel skin twice bisected by the triple triangles of her buttercup yellow bikini, her left arm blocking the sun from her eyes.

Fears And Phobias

Getting divorced, riding a bike, getting Alzheimer’s