I woke up this morning to ghosts in my apartment. The scent of the peach crisp I baked yesterday hung heavy in the air, and as I stumbled sleepily from bed into the hallway, my olfactory senses struggled to identify the aroma. Instead of remembering the peach crisp, my memory reached back 20 years to [...]
This is the picture of my grandma Bunny that I pulled out of my aunt’s basement last Sunday. I had never seen this photo before that moment, and at first glance, I had to struggle to match up this face with the one I carry around with me in my mind. The detail [...]
I sat down at my desk tonight, intending to write a post about seeing “Little Miss Sunshine” tonight and how it made me laugh. I was then going to write about how I used to be known, during my freshman year of college, as the girl who would laugh hysterically during dinner in the [...]
My grandmother Tutu, the one who lived for more than 35 years in my apartment, wore false eyelashes until the day when her aging coordination stopped allowing it. She special-ordered the lashes from a beauty store in Los Angeles that she had discovered in the early 80’s while visiting us in Eagle Rock. [...]
Sitting in my car at midnight on Monday night, outside a Dunkin’ Donuts, on the side of the Grand Central Parkway near LaGuardia Airport, I started thinking about the summer I spent in Hawaii when I was ten. I spent 7 weeks there that year, living with my Uncle Wallace and his family. Life with [...]
The first time I visited Walla Walla, WA I was 17 and was already planning on attending college there in the fall. My mom and I had driven the four hours out from Portland for a drama scholarship audition (I was still working on memorizing the monologue during the ride. I did not [...]
Yesterday morning, already more than half an hour late for work, I hurriedly ate a bowl of Cheerios while leaning up against the kitchen counter. At the bottom of the bowl, I chased the the last three uncooperative O’s around in half-circle, eventually convincing them to board the spoon. I tipped the green bowl up [...]
I opened the windows of my apartment tonight for the first time in at least a month. Thunderstorms swept through the Philadelphia area last night, uprooting trees, downing power lines and ending the oppressive level of heat that had been sitting on top of the city.
While I was growing up, storms that involved thunder [...]
I lived the first eight summers of my life in Eagle Rock, CA, a suburb of LA that is situated right between Pasadena and Glendale. We would often come to Philly for long chunks of time during the summers to visit the grandparents, but we’d still have stretches of summer weeks in hot, smoggy LA.
We [...]
Today is the two year anniversary of the day my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. He was my first significant love, and I was not prepared for the end when it arrived. I realize that this isn’t the type of anniversary that is traditionally circled in calendars and celebrated with gifts or cards. But it [...]
