Adults have different problems with multiplication. For example, divorce times backstabbing times sick child, times crazy boss, times stopped-up toilet equals chest-pounding tremors. Nobody prepares you for this kind of multiplication. When you lose the numbers you lose all kinds of certainty. For one thing, there’s no way to check your work. And no one wants to see your miserable little on-the-fly-process, except the doubt-mongers and second guessers.
These are four stories I wrote after I ran across a contest for stories of 100 words or fewer. It seemed like a crazy idea at first but I came to like trying to tell a story in this format. So did others. Click here to find the winners and think about the next contest [...]
I’m done with my family. I don’t mean to be cruel, mind you. I just need to be free for a bit. I’ve earned it. They’ve been taking up an extraordinary amount of my bandwidth, what with the usual proving myself good and worthy, writing and performing pieces of them, and feeling haunted by the [...]
Sometimes we seem to be swept up in an epidemic of apology. And yet, many apologies are abusive, retaliatory, arrogant–anything but sincere. What do we do about those people?
Thank you so much for sharing … Miriam! I needed to hear [you] take on lunch as an only child…it was like reliving my parochial school days all over again…and a chance to “grow up” about something I had forgotten, yet needed to let go. What a blessing! Leah On Peanut Butter Neglect
For most of us who sign up, Motherhood is the biggest, most wonderful, most frustrating and demanding job we ever do. It is exceptional and ordinary, divine and accursed. And you never look at your mother the same way after you’ve gone there. I’m pretty sure it’s way bigger than I yet know.
In the world of self-help, failure-to-dream seems almost unimaginable. But for some of us, this got squeezed out early.
Just me against the world–I learned it in groupthink. From the collection Intersections.