Tag: memoir
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Memoir: A summer job (1981)
So much great culture was happening for me in 1981. My high points: But my memoir prompt–to describe a summer job in 500-ish words–limits me. So as I was enjoying the culture above referenced, here’s my chapter: I was 20 years old the summer of 1981, living rent-free with dad in his two-bedroom apartment off…
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Memoir: Goodbye, old friend (1982-98)
Dear Mes, I wasn’t at your side in 1998 when you crossed the “rainbow bridge” to your afterlife, which I suppose holds endless green meadows teeming with flocks of pliant sheep that you direct and protect for eternity. You had your father’s shepherd heart, and you shepherded me and my growing family through my young…
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Memoir: Protest (1983)
For our protest to matter, it has to be reported. We hope the Daily Pantagraph, or at least the Vidette, will cover it tomorrow.
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Memoir: A thought experiment concerning Dad (1973-80)
How would my father be doing if he were alive and well today, if he hadn’t died at 59 of bowel cancer? I think Dad might have adapted pretty well to the current culture. Several times, I saw him accommodate powerful changes in mores that happened around him in the 1970s. A professional adaptation occurred…
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Memoir: a stomach-churning event (1976)
But kids who did “drugs”? I was not them. My preferred stupifiant was respectable. Wasn’t it advertised endlessly with catchy jingles? And didn’t the most popular shows drinking on TV?
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Memoir: Musical Madeleines (1970-73) (1983-85)
“… in that time Taupin’s protagonists grew dark with a growing awareness of corruption and human depravity–strong stuff for 12-year-old me.”
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Memoir: back to school again, but different (2024)
It’s “back to school time,” late September, and I feel nostalgia for all those autumns I bravely buckled up, put on the uniform, bid farewell to summer leisure reading and reconciled myself to another year of Education-ese. All teachers understood the calendar: in August or September, get your s-word together. You’re working for the school…
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Memoir: unsung hero Sharon (1971-72)
In 1971 and 72, when mom is bodily present between stints in psych wards, she disappears for days in deep chemical fogs inside her bedroom, inaccessible to us kids. Into the motherless void steps fifteen-year-old Sharon, who becomes a loving presence for her younger siblings, Sheila, Sarah, and me. It is Sharon who in mom’s…
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Memoir: Mother (1961-71)
Oblivious to the presence of my sisters, my mother sighs wistfully to me. She recounts how, with each of her previous three pregnancies, her goal of a male baby had been cruelly deferred. But as a Christian woman, she kept faithfully praying and then–this blessed night at West Suburban Hospital when the nurse handed her…
The Wikiness 