These Days/Padlocks
The windows in our apartment are massive panes of glass that open vertically as opposed to horizontally. There is also a metal guard, presumably a safety precaution for children, that stops the windows from opening more than three inches. I can’t argue with that. I installed window locks for my own children when we had our house. Right now, metal guards are no longer necessary. Admittedly, I am claustrophobic by nature. Even elevators make me a little squirmy. I want to open the damn windows as wide as possible and let in the air. I spend far too much time opening and closing the windows in...
Read MoreThose Days/August 1998
Lady Ace sat in a corner of our garage for the last 15 years, her blue chrome frame covered with cobwebs. Her tires were flat and grooveless. The red reflector light was shaded with a thick coating of soot. Every time we cleaned the garage, my husband asked if the bicycle shouldn’t be donated along with the plastic Little Tykes cars and the tricycles, the Wiffle ball sets, sand pails, and shovels. And each time I moved Lay Ace back into her corner, showing my husband that the kick stand still held her up. Just leave her there, I’d say. You never know. In 1978, I held a sketchy job...
Read MoreThese Days/Sisters
My parents have lived in the same apartment since 1957. My sister (Bobbi, though everyone knows her as Barbara) and I remember when: the trappings of everything contemporary avocado green appliances, florescent lighting, free-standing televisions with remote controls (that changed the seven channels and turned on and off), crystal chandeliers, faux marble tiles in the foyer, a linoleum kitchen floor, matching floral bedspreads and draperies in the bedrooms, and cornices in the dining and living rooms; the manual elevator with the uniformed and white-gloved operator, the sparkle of the...
Read MoreThose Days/May 1998
The painting hangs over the two wing chairs in our living room. It looks like a Modigliani: a woman with a long, beautiful and almost sorrowful face, dressed in bright garb, sitting in a living room of her own. The chairs and the painting are three of my favorite possessions: once they belonged to my grandparents. This morning’s assignment for the newspaper was on tag sales. The woman who runs them, Esther, took me to an elderly woman’s house and explained: The woman’s husband had recently died, her children are middle-aged and married with children. The woman is heading to...
Read MoreThese Days/Judy’s Pearls
My cousin Judy (who is really my mother’s first cousin but sits between my mother’s and my generation) is one of the most consistently philosophical women I’ve ever known. Over the years, unwittingly, she has given me pearls of wisdom, typically after we have a conversation where I relate a circumstance, trial, or curve that was thrown. One of Judy’s best pearls in the last several years as we’ve discussed our marriages and the marriages of our parents (her father was my grandfather’s brother) is that children never really know their parents’...
Read MoreThese Days by Stephanie can also be seen here!
Advertisement
Recent Comments