GRANDE DAME LITERARY

When I was a child, my father taught me a trick about how to make yourself wake up at a certain time if you didn’t have an alarm clock handy or even how to remember something you had to do the next morning when you went to bed. He said that what you should do was to picture a blank blackboard, like the kind I knew from school, and then picture yourself picking up a piece of chalk and writing on the blackboard exactly what you wanted to remember the next day. “Try it and see,”

My dreamscape shifts, images fading in and out of consciousness. The flickering movie speeds up, then slows, finally resolving into something recognizable: My kitchen. The room is filled with a flat light that casts few shadows, the middle world. A dark-haired woman sits at my cherry wood dining table, examining bone china teacups neatly arranged on a silver tray as if I'd been expecting company. "Your mother loved these," the woman says, holding a translucent white cup wit

There is a certain time of day I call the in-between.   The sun is still there, and yet it has already begun to descend.   I love this hour because nothing feels final.   Not day. Not evening.   The light shifts. The day exhales.   For a moment, I am not reaching for what comes next.   It feels like crossing time zones midair, where two realities exist at once.   I have lived here before.   Between diagnosis and acceptance. Between goodbye and silence. Between the woman I was

Delisia considered herself to be the good daughter. Blond and slight, she had majored in economics before going on to get a master’s degree in architecture, her ambition driving her to apply for scholarships and marry her way into a higher income bracket. Even an early divorce had not lessened her stature in the family hierarchy as her parents reacted kindly by saying that they hadn’t really liked the husband all that much. Aline, three years younger, was certainly no black s

Every autumn, a puzzle takes over our house—and, somehow, our lives. What starts as a small box of scattered cardboard quickly grows into a season-long obsession. It’s part hobby, part decoration, part social experiment, and part silent competition between family members who all claim to ‘just be helping.’ We have a folding table that migrates from room to room depending on the season, chasing the best light like a spoiled cat with commitment issues. Sometimes it’s in the liv

The first time I touched a dead person, I was ten years old at my grandfather’s funeral. I stared at his profile because I was not tall enough to look down at his face. I noticed that the end of his nose turned slightly downward. My Aunt Thelma set a chair next to the casket. She helped me kneel on the seat of the chair for a better view.             I looked. It was Grampa for sure. As I turned to descend from the chair, Aunt Thelma said, “Carol, would you like to kiss Gramp

Your words chosen oh so carefully.   Beautifully. “I want to know you. Tell me anything and everything.”   Recklessly. “Let’s move away from here. We can start over, somewhere warmer.”   You led me down the most romantic path saying, “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”   I smiled all the way thinking there would be flowers, diamonds, and a stroller at the end. But it only led to slaughter.   Two cuts: first shallow— “I don’t feel the same,” then deep— “No, we ca

Early morning, summer sun fills the study with peaceful yellow light. Already at my desk, reading emails, inhaling strong coffee, pondering a suitable response to the solicitor, hopefully one of the last I will ever need to write. Unravelling a life, my life; the journey through a tunnel of a thousand emotional miles is nearly complete. Finally I am beginning to see light, have a sense of a future, wonder what might be next. As if on cue my laptop emits a soft PING, it’s his

Where is one to go when love has departed? When breath wavers, my throat tightens, and only despair fills my lungs?   My wounds burn with saltwater grief— it always comes in waves. Unlike the tide, it doesn’t recede quickly. I grit my teeth in the sting. I will remain by the water.   Pacing the dock by day, sitting atop the lighthouse by night. The shore is now my home. Here I may be found, while I wait for love’s return.   His voyage long, his journey hard fought. His soul w

It’s a cake made mostly of air, sluiced in scents of sugar, white chocolate and lemon. Cooled, melted chocolate spun first into the batter, then into cream for the frosting. Doing her part to hold the fragile tower in line is homemade curd of Meyer lemons. Baked for a friend’s birthday 40-some years ago, I’ve tried twice to recreate the cunning confection. I woke this morning thinking that I should try to make this cake again. Then I remember how my neck and back turn to fir

After months that had faded along with my energy into years, after I’d gone to my family doctor complaining about my debilitating ear pain, unusual sensations in my mouth and other odd symptoms, I was worn out more than anything else. My last bit of fight went into getting my referral to an infectious disease specialist. A random conversation with a friend who mentioned post-herpetic neuralgia following shingles left me thinking that the headaches that rendered me immobile an