is for Old Wives Tales The phrase, “Old Wives Tales” conveys many, contradictory meanings and images. Old is not a bad thing. Old is alive, and experienced. We can actually use the phrase itself to illustrate some of the clues that such phrases can contain and convey. Old – In our youth-focused […]
Fifty Ways I Love His Mother
by Carol Cassara She was a writer. They all were — journalists, novelists, corporate writers, poets, playwrights, and pamphlet writers. The entire family loved the written word, producing it, reading it, talking about it. I fell in love with their son first, and then with all of them. They embraced me as family and we were all pleased […]
Mrs. Irene Wolfe
by Merna Zimmerman I was a very dissatisfied teen ager when I became a senior in High School. I had always been a well behaved daughter, but I had begun to notice that compared to many of my school mates, I had almost no freedoms. Some of them had jobs and even their own car. […]
A Life of Grace and Focus – Great Aunt Carrie
by Arlene Valentine They were a powerful triad in my life……my grandmother Sarah and her two sisters, Rita and Carrie. As the oldest child in a very poor farm family in a hill town on the shore of the Adriatic Sea in Italy, by the time she was eight years old Carrie was in charge […]
The Rooster in My Kitchen
by Mithra Ballesteros In a small corner of my kitchen hangs this framed needlepoint rooster, one of my most beloved possessions. My Persian grandmother stitched it when she was a young girl living in Hamadan, Iran, probably sometime in the 1920s. Her name was Zarrin and she was very talented with a needle. After her […]
When Christmas Hurts
A huge hurt builds inside me. My father died on Christmas Day 1986. It is a familiar, old hurt. This year it is freshly layered with new hurts and loss. Five months ago the my last living brother died. He was the eldest of my siblings. 13 months ago my brother who was closest to […]