Category: Becoming poor

  • I Always Know

    I always know what people think. This is a blessing and a curse. It’s akin to saying I am never wrong but thankfully I stopped doing that a few years ago. I was once in Walmart with my mom before she died looking for nails, hammers, and hooks. She had never been to Walmart and…

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  • Make Butter

    Make Butter

    How to Make Butter

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  • Craters in the moon

    When I was eight years old my father brought home home a long, rectangular cardboard box which he opened after dinner carefully outside our front door. It was a clear night and warm as I recall and he removed from the box like a surgeon removing a baby from the belly of an unconscious woman…

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  • The Best Memory

    The Best Memory

                                       The Best Memory     The best Fall I remember happened outside of Paris due north near Chambord in November maybe October’s when the Beaujolais Nouveau was released along with me…I walked out the door of the inn we stayed in while you drank with our host. I wandered following troughs of wet leaves…

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  • Person of Interest

    Person of Interest

    “I bought a trailer because I joined a gang. My feet itched and my rain was shutting down so I became a nomad something I’ve always wanted to be. Some language has a word for it: people who don’t feel like they belong anywhere. That’s me. I’m pretty old so I was worried about camping…

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  • The Length of Winter

    I forgot how long winter is. It doesn’t extend from November to March as it should but it’s disobedient and sometimes hides inside a heart and a chamber to the left or to the right and there you are with only a part of your heart functioning because of winter or it’s a fact. You…

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  • My Mother’s Hair

    My Mother’s Hair

    My Mother’s Hair My mother’s hair always escaped from under her red kerchief or the hairspray lacquered on  for control and the hair often went dancing in a night club in Manhattan even when she was in labor with one of us. You can’t control wildness. My mother lay, legs askew, baby coming, never having…

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  • Letting Go When There Is…

    Letting Go When There’s No Rope Left I have a friend who is trying to get divorced. This has been going on for two years. The marriage was a good length, (ten years), and a good part of it was not unhappy but the divorce has turned into a nightmare of hatred, accusations, bitterness, anger,…

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  • Losing a friend you thought…

    I read the obituaries every morning as many people do. I have no idea why we do this. I look for reasons why people died, how old they were when they died, who survived them, etc. The other morning I saw that my childhood friend had died in February of a long term illness. There…

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  • family wall

    family wall

    In our house in Maine there is a family wall where many memories are drawn or painted. The first measurement of a child’s height was done about 35 years ago when my daughter, Christina, was 2 years old. The wall is now covered with lots of memories and people who visit continue to make more of…

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