Creative Nonfiction

When my son was three years old, he told me a story. He described being in utero. Swimming, his hair floating in the waves. The whooshing sound like a heartbeat, like his drum. A feeling like when the cat makes bread on his chest and purrs. He said there was a bright light and a man wearing a mask and he was very cold. I wrote the whole story down, as close to verbatim as I could, in his baby book

A year later, as we sat looking through the book, I asked him about it. A vacant stare, the…

NONFICTION

It wasn’t love at first sight or anything so profound. Instead, it was a gradual process of getting to know one another. Nigel was a biologist. He’d written his doctoral dissertation on the milkweed bug. I learned many interesting facts from Nigel. When I complained about the critters that were feasting on my milkweed, he explained in great detail the non-sex life of the Oleander aphid. They give birth to themselves, or rather clones of themselves without actually having aphid intercourse.

I found all of this fascinating. My husband, Hugh, did not. Bugs were of no interest to him except…

Humor

I was proud of that “Dare to Say No” T-shirt that mom picked up at the JS (that’s what we called any of the myriad of thrift shops where we bought all our clothes except for shoes and underwear (it’s short for Junk Store).

An impressionable, eager to please kid, I wore that anti-drug campaign slogan with pride. …

NonFiction

We had a black rotary phone on a small end table in the living room. If I picked it up very carefully and held my breath, I might be lucky and our neighbors, our party-line, wouldn’t know I was listening in. I’d hold my hand tightly over the mouthpiece, but most of the time they’d detect my presence.

“Somebody’s listening in. Hang up that damn phone right now,” they’d demand.

Their kids did the same when we were on the phone though. It was one of our first hobbies. …

NONFICTION

As a home care nurse in Baltimore, I learned years ago how to get in and out of a house without touching any surface with my bare hands. My first AIDS patient had open sacral wounds and explosive diarrhea. I was nervous, so I called my supervisor for a reassuring pep talk.

“Are you planning to have sex with him?”, she asked.

I assured her that hadn’t entered my mind, or his.

“Well, are you going to share a needle with him?”

I hoped not.

“Get over yourself then and go see him. Just wash your hands.”

I’ve been stuck…

FICTION

Phyllis had always had a difficult time making up her mind. Her mother never gave her much chance to practice, and so that particular skill just never fully developed.

Regular or decaf? Chocolate or vanilla? The white socks or the blue ones? Simple choices people make hundreds of times every day were burdensome to Phyllis. It wasn’t for lack of intelligence. It just took more time and energy than Phyllis had to spare. That waste of time was what made her nervous.

She’d managed to graduate from community college, having majored in something called “General Studies,” taking classes recommended for…