Yesterday began with a list: How to Tell If You Are Depressed ( Read more... )

What I didn't know when I started my last entry - yes, nearly a year ago - is that my brain really was being fried, not just by the activity I described but also by an infection brewing in my right knee, helped along by an improperly installed screw in the rod placed in the tibia to heal the break I gave it falling out my wheelchair the previous ( Read more... )

My brain is fried ( Read more... )

This morning, Maria, her train of thought interrupted by a phone call, forgot something she wanted to tell me. She grimaced, trying to bring it back. "If mom were here," she sighed, "she'd say, 'It must not have been important ( Read more... )

I bought a turkey the other day, a small one, because I love turkey and because I love turkey soup even more. I was feeling generous, wanted to share, invited M's son, Kelly, to have dinner with us Saturday. planned to serve up baked ambercup squash -- it's praises having been sung to me by a vendor at the farmer's market. fresh green beans. brown ( Read more... )

My First Car

I bought my first car the summer before my junior year of college. That was also the summer I moved out of my father’s house and into a trailer I shared with my best friend, Deb.

The car -- a 1970 (71?) AMC Sportabout, banana yellow, a little 4-door hatchback station wagon -- sat on the gravel patch that served as our yard while I ( Read more... )

if I am lucky ( Read more... )

the birthdays of the dead ( Read more... )

I made a mistake the other day in the library.
I passed by a medical resource dictionary
and, on a whim, looked up
my sister’s musical tumor,
astrocytoma glioblastoma,
and the multiple myaloma
that danced in my father’s bones.

I remember hearing the words multiple myaloma
from my father’s doctor when I cornered him
in his office and made him tell me what ( Read more... )

4:30 I wake up smack in the middle of a panic. The sky black. Or as black as it gets with the street and bridge lights stuck up there like fuzzy suckers. Heart pounding. In a sweat. I’m used to this. I’ve been doing it since I was 8 or 9 years old. But this morning I can breathe only in shallow little gasps,  like trying to pull pudding down the ( Read more... )