It would have been the summer of 1962, and Miss Etta James was on the box. Time stood still for me as she raised the gospel shout at the beginning definitely got my little-white-girl-in-suburban-L.A. attention. “Sometimes I get a good feeling A feeling I’ve never, never, never, had before . . .” Her gravelly vocal [...]
I’m not particularly proud of any of this, this eating out at Denny’s. It’s a chain, it’s been racist, and its red-and-yellow logo is not cool, hip, or artistic. But you get a free Grand Slam on your birthday (not everywhere, but at my neighborhood one anyway), the booths are comfortable, the service is great [...]
Have you recently been on the road with a useless woman? A woman who thinks she never has to serve the driver, clean a window, check the oil, or pump gas herself? Was it because I was alone on my latest 1,300 mile road trip and noticed how most women sit like sticks in the [...]
Film review: GERRY “A triumph!” “Provocative!” “Visually spectacular!” “One of the year’s 10 best!” (best what is not specified) were the blurbs on the back of this film I got from the library. The exclamation points alone should have tipped me off that this was going to be outrageously bad, and famously Bostonian Matt Damon [...]
Actually it was East Elfinwild Road, Glenshaw, Hampton Township, Pennsylvania, and it was a hell of a place to drive–or learn to drive–a stick shift. A windy two-laner east up the ravine from the river bottom, East Elfinwild Road was lined with trees, so a sunny day threw quick, blinding shafts across a driver’s eyes: [...]
The red-haired giant from Tennessee was showing me his gowns, trailing his fingers in a reverie along the satin and feathers that hung in his closet. “This is my favorite,” he gushed, pulling out the hem of a silky blue number. A photo of him wearing that dress and ten pounds of wig and makeup [...]
It didn’t snow for Halloween The Pocahantas Halloween that skater’s winter Hundreds of little white girls dressed as Indians Too cold to go door to door They raided the stores in the biggest mall in Anchorage Moms wearing ranch mink Carrying their daughters’ pink coats lined with rabbit fur Those trap lines are so romantic [...]
It’s such a simple thing, a staircase. Yet I spent a good half hour with a two-year-old recently using the library stairs as a giant fascinating toy. Up, down, jump, fall, hold onto my hand, DON’T hold onto my hand, go up, turn around, step back down, do it again, repeat. Fischer-Price doesn’t make stairs, [...]
Halene and I were eating lunch together, together for the last time as it turned out. “So, you remember that scene in Titanic where Jack sketches Rose lying nude on a couch?” Yes, I said. “Well, that was Dogie and me.” She was looking down at her salad and remembering her cowboy-painter husband who had [...]
I often tell new mothers about the “many weanings” a woman goes through and that weaning a child from breastfeeding is just one of many. Now I’m going through another weaning myself: as of this week, all my children will be living on their own. My oldest son lives back east with two roommates in [...]
