Memoirous

Yes, it’s cold outside. Bone-chilling. Sometimes all I want to do is crawl into my loft and sit under blankets and read a book while sipping a hot drink. The cozy quotient. As a kid on school break during the holidays I’d read first the books I got for Christmas, then I’d read the ones my mother bought for my father: current paperbacks, then I’d reread stuff off my brother Steve’s shelf. If I could get someone to drive me to the library, I’d be set for a while. Anyway, my mother might find me sitting on top of the heat register in the bathroom—if she bothered to look for me. It was the warmest place n the house and a place utterly private. No one wanted to barge into the bathroom and out of respect usually didn’t knock on the door. They’d go to one of the other bathrooms. This week with the relentless cold, where not even a hot drink or thick socks helped—I found myself remembering: this young girl seeking solace in books, a warm refuge in the midst of a family where I felt like ...

Corners in the Tiny House are so dark. So I turn on my plant grow lights. We all have SAD. I can see the rain splatter the deck and remember--- The blue jay and cardinal cavorting in the wet grass a moment earlier, the colors decorating the brown grass, and remember--- This too shall pass. My brother Steve sent, in a series of emails, Google pics of the houses our family lived in (not including the serial moves my parents made when fully retired). He used each image to riff on flash memories, really just skimming the surface, of what he recalled most about each place. He should commit to doing a writing study, micro series, of flash memoir using the images as prompts. I used the “the Kettering house on Hackney” to get an overhead view and found the name of the creek I fell into, that my mother had to come pull me out of. It looks like a cement ravine with a trickle of water running through it. Little Beaver Creek. Steve also sent an image of the Wick’s house, former neighbors...

You have no idea what to do. He was the only person you could ever talk to. Your sister plays high school varsity basketball and attends Bible study: two things you know nothing about. He was the only person who didn’t treat you like a kid. Your other brother flicks you on top of the head with his hard fingernail and makes jokes about niggers and watermelons—which you don’t get, not because you’re naïve about racism, but because you don’t find his jokes very funny. He was the only person who ever listened to you. To get Dad’s attention you’d have to turn off the TV. He was the only person who ever understood you. Mom gets a confused look on her face when you mention you’d like to be a writer. And now he’s leaving. Remember that time you walked together in the woods and you told him you were thinking about getting an M.I.A. bracelet and he said it was just a ploy to legitimize the Vietnam War. You never sent away for one. Don’t go, you begged...

I don't have room for a lot of stuff where I live, but after both my parents passed away this winter (I know, incredibly sad) I asked if I could bring home with me a large collection of pictures. It was a HUGE job. Scads of miscellaneous ephemera and pictures of who? when? why? Then I stumbled upon an envelope--and truthfully it made me cry. It was full of pictures, some you can tell only taken a second or two after each other, of Mom and my oldest brother, my parent's first-born. Anyway, I never knew this person. Mom looks SOOOOO young and thin and in love with her baby boy. I think the word would be PROUD. Steve--you made Mom proud. Enjoy: back of this one says at Aunt Sallie's house in Cincinnati