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RelUUctance

I don’t want to be a Unitarian Universalist. Let me try to deconstruct this a bit.
The Roman Catholic church raised me with my parents as surrogates. That is, my parents loved me very much, but their values were largely parroted values of their religion. The extent to which they lived up to these values is […]

I M Lou

I was driving the weekly commute from Charlottesville to Fredericksburg. Miles of farmland and two-lane roads make the mind wander (unless I’m listening to Air America Radio and getting depressed about the need to move to Canada before my son is 18).
I’ve been in a strange emotional place lately, owing largely to my period, and […]

Why Don’t I Just Quit

I complain, I complain, I complain… I’m one of those people who frequently hears the phrase:
“Why don’t you just quit?”
Is there a woman alive who HASN’T heard that from her husband? Is there a husband who hasn’t said that to his wife at least once? (strike that: in my old neighborhood from which I gratefully […]

Pink Bicycle Rider

Blake had such courage today at the fair. His first ever. All the rides, “kiddie” and otherwise, that scared him and made his eyes go so wide. He went on them, and had that look of fear on his face during the whole thing, and then wanted to do it again.
My son is such an […]

It’s Just Not African

The year was 1980, and I was spending the day with a friend of mine, Tony, from my summer job on Rector Street in Manhattan where we each were draftspeople for a naval contractor, labelling drawings for battleships so the plans could be sent to the appropriate shipyards across the country. Tony was black, and […]