Category: Nonfiction (Page 4 of 11)

The Walk to Ma’s House

17 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Diane Funston

Walking to my great-grandmother’s house after fifth and sixth grade once a week–I remember so clearly, see it right in front of me. Out of the old brick Lincoln school number 22 off Joseph Avenue. Turning right towards downtown, you could see the huge Baptist Church way at the end of the avenue, Xerox Tower beyond that.

My memory is always winter. This was a magical journey in winter. I remember huge soft snowflakes falling, the air cold but very fresh. Catching snowflakes on my tongue, on my fluffy mittens. It was almost like a Christmas card.

Passing Bodner Bakery on my right, the scent of fresh pastries and breads wafted out the door and smelled of warmth and love. Prune rugalach, challah, black and white cookies, sliced seeded rye in the slicer.

Blanks Market was next, a sausage shop with all the German wurst we would buy on Saturday. Sausages and hams hung in the big front window. Slabs of bacon in the case, along with homemade sauerkraut and potato salad. Across the street was Schmidts Market, a butcher who also made sauerkraut, sold in cardboard containers like Chinese food comes in. Schmidts also sold fresh ground round my grandmother used to make gahochtus, raw beef with onions, egg, and seasoning served on pumpernickel bread. Delicious.

I went past the fish market where whole fish with staring eyeballs looked out from the case. On Friday the place was alive and jumping with people lined up to buy take-out fish fry. Farther along was the Bareis Shoe store with Buster Brown and his dog Tige on a hanging sign. Saddle shoes were in the window, and black patent leather shoes. On a winter day there were lacy snowflakes glittering in the display window.

Next on my walk, right at the corner of Wilkins Street where I turned left to walk to Ma’s house was a tombstone engraver with monuments in the yard and samples of engraving in the window. Beautiful rose granite and white marble you just had to run your hand over on the way by. A gorgeous black wrought iron fence kept people away from the stones.

Walking up the street I pass rows of houses mostly from the 1920s like Ma’s house. Some are multi-family, large homes referred to as Boston style with big front porches, even on the upstairs units. The single family houses are mostly small cottage style. Nothing ornate about them architecture-wise. Small backyards, many with fenced front yards with gardens. I pass lots of roses wrapped for the winter, lilac bushes, barberry shrubs and a lot of city street trees that are maples or chestnuts. A few spruce trees and juniper bushes add green and blue to the stark landscape.

At last I arrive at my great-grandmother’s house. Up three steps then four into the small front porch and inside. I smell the chicken vegetable soup simmering on the old 1930s Magic Chef stove. I hug Ma, and she kisses me on both cheeks. She is 80, white hair in a tight bun held in place with barrettes. She has glasses, wears a tiny floral print dress covered by an apron. Her feet wear black, heavy shoes that lace up.

We talk about school and I have coffee and windmill cookies with her. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was ten. It’s a very German tradition to have coffee and a sweet around three or four in the afternoon. After my snack I help her dust. The living room has dark navy blue velvet and wicker furniture. There is a humidor where my great-grandfather kept cigars. I don’t remember him; he died when I was a year old. There is wallpaper in the living and dining rooms. The woodwork is dark stained oak.

The kitchen is painted a very light pink. Gray Formica covers the lower half of the walls like wainscoting. The refrigerator is very old with a tiny freezer and a handle that pulled toward you to open up. Westinghouse, I remember. A key-wound Art Deco clock kept time in the kitchen, it’s loud pendulum swung back and forth. A big rocking chair is in the middle of the large kitchen. The cat, Topper, on the cushion, sleeping.

Before supper I shovel a little path by the back door and sprinkle some rock salt. Both Ma and the neighbor Mable have luscious perennial gardens that bloom crazy in other seasons. The other neighbor Willy has a beautiful garden and a pond with goldfish that winter over.

We eat supper, the hot soup with little oyster crackers. She does a funny thing with her dentures where they jut out of her mouth then back in again. I feel very cared for and loved by my great-grandma and my grandma. I loved going to her house every week. It gave warmth to the winter, the walk over so full of all of the senses. It was a time of innocence, where I could be a young girl who didn’t have to have all the answers.

Diane Funston was born and raised in Rochester, New York, and currently lives in Marysville, CA. Diane has worked with adults with disabilities her entire working life. Besides emerging as a writer, Diane enjoys beading, hiking, her family, and her dogs.

How Poppi Met Nonni

17 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Tarah Friend Cantore

I place the delicate ornament into the small box, nestled in the green tissue paper. It is a pink ceramic baby shoe with Baby’s First Christmas on it.

I imagine it is the year 2033. My family is gathered for the holidays at our New Hampshire home.

My youngest granddaughter, Ella, giggles and says, “Poppi, tell us the story about how you and Nonni met!”

From the kitchen, I can see Vinnie sitting in his leather chair in the great room. Bode climbs onto his knee, exclaiming, “Yeah, Poppi!” Ella is occupying the other knee, grinning from ear to ear. The four-year-old inseparable cousins are curly-haired, brown-eyed bookends.

Hazel runs from the kitchen to join her brother and cousin. As the flour from her auburn hair releases, a cloud of white dust trails behind her. At only nine years old, she has entered the Children’s Baking Show, and this afternoon, she is schooling us in the kitchen, baking Linzer cookies with raspberry filling.

My daughters, Brittany and Molly, as well as Molly’s wife, Jordan, are with me in the kitchen. Jordan is sitting at the island, where Molly is standing next to her, caressing her pregnant belly. I bring my favorite blue-glazed mug to my lips, appreciating the warmth in my hands and my heart.

“Bake at 350 degrees!” I shout at my new oven. Apparently, it will sense the temperature of whatever is baking or cooking so as not to overcook or undercook. While I am confident it will be efficient and accurate, there’s something to be said about slightly undercooked, gooey cookies. Besides, perfect baking doesn’t exactly fit with my hope to give my grandchildren the gift of imperfection, something I never had.

Hazel’s younger sister, Lydia, momentarily pops her head up from reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Hazel enters the room, then she resumes reading. She is sitting in the “cubby” with her father, Bo. When our daughters were little, they referred to the “cubby” as the spot at the end of the couch where they would sit in the bend of someone’s legs. When our grandchildren come to visit, they fight for the spot, yelling, “I want the cubby.”

Lydia is seven years old and a real bookworm. She will likely complete the first Harry Potter book and bring The Chamber of Secrets home with her. She has wavy, auburn hair and resembles Hermione, one of the characters in her book.

Vinnie begins, “Well, first of all, I had a crush on your Nonni before we even met.”

Ella inquires in her soft little voice, “What is a crush?”

He tilts his head slightly towards Ella. “A crush is when you really like someone and believe you could even love them.”

Ella and Bode nod in sync.

Hazel looks at her father. “Dada, did you have a crush on Mama?”

Bo smiles and says, “I did!”

Without Lydia’s eyes leaving her book, she adds, “On the softball field.”

“That’s right! But that’s another story,” says Bo.

Hazel plops down on the rug in front of the fireplace and focuses on Vinnie.

He says, “I saw her that night at Minerva’s. The closer I got, the more pretty she was-“

Bode interrupts, “What’s Minerva’s?”

“It was a bar in Burlington where Nonni went to college.”

Lydia sits up from the cubby and exclaims, “You and Nonni met at a bar?”

“That’s right.”

He had all of the children’s attention now.

“I asked Nonni if she remembered me, and she did. We talked some. I was about to ask her to dance, but my friend, Mark, was bugging me to leave. I asked her if I came back, would she dance with me? She smiled shyly and said, ‘Yes!’ When I returned later, I found her, and we danced. But then she said she had to leave.”

I recalled the sticky bar floor, the 80s music, and his adorable face.

“When we walked out of the bar, I leaned over and tried to kiss her.”

Bode wrinkled up his face and said, “Gross, Poppi!”

Vinnie refrained from laughing. “Well, she didn’t let me anyway, Bode!”

I was no floozy.

“She gave me her phone number, though.”

“And that is how Nonni and I met!” Vinnie nods and falls silent.

Hazel pops onto all fours on the rug and shouts, “But what happened next?”

Lydia chimes in, “Yeah! What happened next?”

“Well,” Vinnie orchestrates the perfect suspenseful pause and then says, “I didn’t call her.”

Hazel shouts, “How rude, Poppi!”

“Very rude. I imagine she was disappointed. And maybe a little mad.”

Lydia shakes her head with disbelief. “Well, how did you ever fall in love with her?”

Hazel inquires further, “And get married?”

“Well, she called me a couple weeks later when she was home visiting Gigi. I guess I didn’t make a bad first impression after all.”

“Why would you, Poppi?” Hazel asks.

“Because I had a little too much liquid courage.”

Bode reaches up and takes Vin’s face in his little hands. “What’s liquid courage?”

“Well, I drank too many beers. I thought I needed them to be brave enough to talk to her.”

Hazel yells, “But you didn’t! You didn’t at all!”

“Why do you say that, Hazel?”

She replies, “Because Nonni had a crush on you too!”

I walk into the great room, like I’m accepting an Oscar, and say, “I really did!” I give Vinnie a kiss. My family applauds, hoots, and hollers.

I return to the present moment. I wrap the ornament in candy cane-striped paper and tie a red velvet ribbon around it. I feel the smooth velvet between my fingers, inspecting the asymmetry of the loops, and decide to leave them uneven. Vinnie and I used to joke about which version of the story we would tell our grandchildren, when we were old and gray, about how we met in a bar. This one is perfect.

Tarah Friend Cantore has published a non-fiction memoir incorporating her artwork in tough & vulnerable, in addition to her novel, Spiral Bound. Her poetry has been published in The Bluebird Word and in the Telling Our Stories Through Word and Image Anthology.

Nutcracker Memories

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I was in my attic, organizing the boxes and piles of the stuff of my life, when I came across a theatre program from 1961, for The Nutcracker Ballet, that transported me to the steps of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. My memories of that day surged back.

I am six, my sister Cathy is nine and our big brother, Jimmy, is ten. Mom bends down, holds my coat collar and tells me to obey Jimmy and Cathy. No squirming around and no talking during the performance. Her voice is firm and strict, but she hugs me too. She will meet us back on the steps after the ballet is over.

I’d not thought of that sweet day in years, the gift of a day. I wrote to my mother that December, sharing my memories on holiday paper, a soft red with a banner of green wreaths across the top. My mom and I spent more time being annoyed with each other than we did feeling affectionate. I wanted her to know that I remembered her kindness.

My mother had scraped together the money for our tickets but could not afford one for herself or to pay a babysitter for my two younger brothers. Mom was thirty years old with five children, making ends meet on dad’s firefighter’s wages. But she wouldn’t let her older children miss the magic of The Nutcracker. She drove us from our suburban home to San Francisco, dropped us off in front of the theatre, and picked us up a few hours later.

I wrote of the beauty and sequins of the ballerinas, the enchanting music, the fighting rats and sugar plum fairies. Swirling collages of colors, and sparkling silver and glitter. That ballet was the most glamorous event of my young life; the beginning of my love affair with dance and theatre.

After Mom received the essay, she called to say she loved the piece. Her voice choked on the words. We talked a bit more, and as I got ready to end the call, Mom said “I don’t remember taking you to the ballet.” I was taken aback but she’d had lots of kids and memories to keep track of.

At our Christmas gathering at her home, Mom shared the printed story with my older brother and sister.

“That is so sweet,” my brother commented.

“I love that story,” my sister said. Then looking at my brother she asked “Do you remember going? I don’t.”

He shook his head. I was flabbergasted. A standout event in my mind, and none of the main characters besides me even remembered. If I hadn’t saved the theatre program, I might have wondered if I’d made it up.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction and poetry. She’s looking for an agent for her novel, Finding Nora, a story set in 1991 Oakland about love and friendship during the AIDS epidemic. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, The Bluebird Word and several print anthologies. Read her nonfiction essay Parting Gift from last year’s holiday issue.

Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash

Longing for a Close Family

2 December 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

In little boxes I see living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and a lovely turquoise pool. Spread out over six states all eight siblings’ faces appear on my Zoom screen. I see white hair, wrinkled faces, sagging necks, thick rimmed bifocals. We have all aged precipitously since our parents’ memorial two years ago.

In my memory I see us young and laughing, amid a sea of Christmas gifts and children, Mom cooking, and Dad shooting grainy 8mm movies.

As young adults we did everything together. Wilderness camping — my older brother rigging ropes and pulleys to hoist food packs in trees away from the bears. Being a bridesmaid in my younger brother’s wedding. My sister and I taking our daughters to Hawaii when neither of us could afford it. Driving to Florida with my youngest brother and our kids through a snowstorm the winter after our divorces. Playing soccer and running a marathon with another sister. My siblings were my best friends.

My youngest sister announces brightly that she just had a COVID vaccine and asks if everyone else has. Moving screen to screen everyone nods yes. A granddaughter in Alabama had a mild case, another in Colorado is recovering. Florida brother asks, “So you all listen to the news and believe that crap about masks?” Minnesota sister cuts in abruptly to describe her beach vacation with her daughters and grandkids. No more talk of COVID.

I ask about a niece who lives in Brooklyn Center where protests continue after the shooting of a young Black man. Her dad is terse. “She lives far from that police station. She’s safe.” I say, “Oh good, I’m glad.” Nothing more. No mention of Black Lives Matter although we grew up in Minnesota where it all began.

Arizona brother sold his Arabian horses since he and his wife can no longer ride. Minnesota sister’s weight has stabilized and anti rejection drugs have been decreased since her heart replacement. As her face appears in the large center screen I see how thin she is. Utah sister makes us laugh. Her daughter in NYC adopted a cat because her apartment has mice. We smile when a curly black puppy crawls over Minnesota brother’s shoulder. We ooh and ah at old oil portraits of Mom and Dad on New York sister’s wall and remember them hanging over the fireplace at our parents’ house. The fireplace of so many Christmas Eves.

For a moment I feel a warmth that used to be so easy.

We long for that close family but none of us will dip below the surface. Over the years we’ve learned where the sharp edges are. Who veers right, who veers left, and who wants no conflict. Eight individuals raised under one roof by the same parents, we know how divergent our beliefs, how passionate our politics. How fragile the connection. So we tiptoe around the hearth, drop a few twigs and dry grasses on the ash and dart quickly away. No one wants to spark the fire.

Sherri Wright is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, Persimmon Tree, Ocotillo Review, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet. Read earlier work in The Bluebird Word.

Songs in the Subway

22 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Colleen W.

(Identifying names and characteristics have been changed.)

I was watering beebalm in my scraggly, but well-intentioned garden when a call came from a nurse. “Jason has had a difficult evening. He overturned a heavy table in the day room and tried to wrap a nurse up in a bedsheet.” I set the watering can down.

“He was put in five-point restraints,” she said.

Silence rang in my ears.

“I didn’t know they still did that,” I said, choking back tears.

I’ve been put in arm restraints before, but never also, leg restraints. My son and I both live with bipolar disorder and have required psychiatric hospitalizations.

A few days passed and he was what they termed as “clearer” and could have visitors. That evening on the way to the hospital I stopped at Subway. I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. When my son is in crisis, I often forget to eat.

I sat in a back booth with my tuna sandwich. I was taking a bite when a young man with long, curly hair and sheepish eyes wearing a green Subway polo, came up to me and said he liked my shirt. I looked down to see what I had on. It was a Grateful Dead t-shirt, the one where the skeletons are playing golf. I thanked him.

“I’ve never been to a show, but my dad went to a lot of them in college. He’s probably around your age,” he said.

“I’ve been to around 65 shows,” I admitted.

Talking about a time in my life I was fond of, lulled me, and I felt a sense of melancholy. The young man might have sensed my mood. “I have something for you,” he said, then turned and went through a door behind me.

I stared at a wilted browning piece of lettuce across the table. The familiar opening chords of “China-cat Sunflower” started to play. I listened to the music, in awe that a stranger would think to play a song for me.

My eyes welled up, but I focused on the beige table, my sandwich wrapper, the tip of my straw and willed myself not to cry.

When I was sure I had composed myself, I made my way to the counter. The kid who had disappeared to the back to change the music was mopping up by the register. He stopped to ring me up for a bag of Doritos I selected for Jason. I asked him for two chocolate-chip cookies.

“I want to get them for my son, but I’m not sure he can have them in an open bag. He’s in the hospital and there’s a lot of rules where he is,” I said.

He nodded and silently sealed the opening of the bag with a sticker.

I thanked him. The song had morphed into “I Know You Rider.” I pushed open the door, blinking at the blaze of the summer evening’s sun.

Colleen W. writes poetry and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the Gyroscope Review, Ravensperch, and The Potomac Review, among other publications. She works in mental health, and is also a consumer of mental health services.

a person ironing cloth — Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Pexels.com

How to Iron

13 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by N.G. Haiduck

My father did the ironing in our house. My mother was sick, not bed-ridden, but too sick to stand at a board pushing a hot iron over my father’s white cotton shirts. So in the evening, after supper (my father cooked) and the dishes (my sister and I washed), in the living room between the sofa and the armchair where my mother sat stone-faced in front of the TV, my father set up the ironing board.

He tested the steam iron by pressing it over a dishtowel. When the iron sputtered, he ironed: his white shirts, my pleated skirts, my sister’s ruffled blouses, my mother’s house dresses. He ironed the sheets. He taught me how to iron his handkerchiefs. First one side, fold once, iron, fold again, the monogram on the outside, iron, fold, iron. I progressed to pillow cases. Same method: iron, fold, iron, fold, iron.

To this day, my aunts disparage my mother (she died and, a few years later, he died) because “she made your father do the ironing.”

My father had a vegetable garden on a patch of land he rented from Miss Bliss, who owned the weather-beaten farmhouse next door. All summer long, I helped weed my father’s garden. On weekends, he sold tomatoes at a roadside stand on Route 51 in front of that old gray house, until Miss Bliss sold her property to a developer.

My father’s partner selling vegetables at the roadside stand was Mike, who had a cornfield down the road. I had to go to Mike’s house one Saturday to pick up an envelope. My mother, sitting in her armchair, called after me, “Don’t tell her I don’t iron!” Mike’s wife, Mary, ironed her husband’s white shirts perfectly.

A smiling plump woman, Mary opened the door, and I came into a living room filled with waves of freshly ironed white shirts, a few pale blue shirts mixed in, on hangers hooked over doorknobs, on rods attached to closet doors, and from the wing of a floor lamp standing next to a massive ironing board in the center of the room. It smelled like spring.

I had to step over a hassock and duck under the shirts to get to the kitchen, where Mary gave me an envelope (money from the business, I suppose). Dutifully, I brought the envelope home, but my mother said she never wanted me to go back there again. “I don’t want her to find out I don’t iron.” Of course I would never tell.

Just as my grandmother never told me. Only after my mother died, she said, shaking her head, “Too bad you didn’t know your mother before she started taking those pills.” I didn’t know. Nobody told me.

My husband says his shirts come out brighter and crisper from the dry cleaners. Still, in the evening, after dinner dishes are put away, I set up the board in the living room. I turn on the TV. When the iron is hot and sputtering, I iron. My husband’s shirts: back of the collar first, then the cuffs, run the iron up the sleeves, flip to the back of the shirt and the shoulder; then the front around the buttons, the shirt pocket, and last, the front of the collar. Same procedure for my blouses. Blue jeans: pockets ironed inside out, waist band and fly pressed twice, then the seams and a sharp crease. Pillowcases (but not sheets): lay flat on the board, iron, fold, iron, fold, iron.

N.G. Haiduck taught English at The City College of New York and now writes from Burlington, Vermont. Publications (2023) include: Aeolian Harp Anthology, Cold Lake Anthology, Kakalak, and BigCityLit. Haiduck’s first book, “Cabbie,” about a young woman driving a cab in New York City, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

For Every October

12 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Stacie Eirich

The leaves have begun to turn from green to yellow to brown, falling from branches to land in the lawn beside me. The grass is littered with them, the hard cusps of acorns rolling beneath my toes. A cooler wind wisps against my cheek and darkness falls earlier each evening; summer heaves her last breaths as October’s notes become the steady hymn of autumn.

Before last October, autumn would have been my answer to the question: What is your favorite season? Like so many artists, my muse is found in a cool darkness stitched with stars, in nights fragrant with the scent of smoke and glow of firelight, in walks through forests thick with trees that shiver in the breeze, their leaves shimmering green-gold-rust in sunlight as they fall to hard ground.

Before last October, I would have told you that October was a beautiful month, one where nature glistens wide with colors, the one in which my son was born. The month of pumpkin spice, sweater weather, homemade chili and Halloween. I would have told you that October felt lovely and comfortable, a relief from the stifling heat of summer.

I’m not sure how I feel about October now. How I feel about that fateful day: October 12th — Diagnosis Day. The day an MRI revealed that my fourteen-year-old daughter had a brain tumor.

The day was blissful with sunlight and a soft breeze that welcomed in the beginning of my favorite season. In the early afternoon, while she and her brother were still at school and before we knew anything of scans or tumors — I took a journal out on a nature walk. I gathered leaves and wrote verses, pressed them in. That journal sits in my bedside drawer, untouched now since then, almost a year later.

Like autumn, I’m nervous to revisit it, to open it and find whatever beauty is left there. Beauty that is evidence to how October gives life and changes it, evidence to how different the world felt last October from this October.

But as we approach October 12th this year, I find myself drawn to the journal, drawn to touch and examine the leaves I pressed into its pages, to read the words I wrote before I knew anything of brain tumors or intracranial pressure or hydrocephalus or medulloblastoma, of MRIs or lumbar punctures or biopsies or surgical resections. Of shunts or ports or proton beams or absolute neutrophil counts. Before I knew what it means to have a child with cancer.

Yesterday we decorated the house with balloons, celebrated my daughter’s NED status: No Evidence of Disease. She has completed her treatments, completed a year’s worth of life-altering experiences that have both saved her and changed her. She has shown us her resilience and breaking point, her incredible strength and heartbreaking fragility.

I watch the balloons bounce lightly in the breeze on our mailbox, their colors and confetti bright in October’s sunshine. I walk through the lawn, unraveling ribbons to watch them travel higher into a clear blue sky, listen to the chirps of blue jays in the branches.

I hear the sounds of my daughter waking; she comes to sit beside me as I write. We watch the squirrels chitter and chase each other through the lawn, gather acorns and bury them. I tell her about the journal, and she fetches it from my drawer, anxious to see the memories left in its pages.

We touch the dried, spiny pressed leaves and read my words together, October’s light vivid with sun in a clear sky. I feel something loosen, something lighten inside me, and a warmth despite the cool breeze that brushes my skin.

Before last October, I didn’t know light would still be possible through darkness, that survival meant looking for it in each hour. I didn’t know joy would find its way to us through grief.

I look up into the sunlight of this October and see the beauty that remains, glimpse how nature and life are colorful and changing and resilient. I accept that this October will never be the same as the last, that life and experiences have ways of changing you that cannot be undone. And I breathe.

My daughter hands me a clutch of pink, purple and blue ribbons and we walk across the grass together. Slowly, we release strands of ribbon upward, watching the balloons confetti swirl into a cloud of rainbow in blue. We twine our fingers together and look up, up — up.

We breathe in the scents and sounds of October and tell each other we are glad to be home. We talk about her brother’s birthday; how much taller and bigger and stubborner and smarter he is now that he’s almost fourteen.

I think of how amazing it is to be awake together to watch the wings that fly between the trees, the squirrels rush through the grass, the green-gold leaves shimmer in autumn’s light. Present, familiar, yet ever-changing, and wondrous — this month with a heart for so many things, this October and the way it unravels me, the way it breaks me apart and stitches me back together again.

Stacie Eirich is a mother of two, poet & singer from Louisiana. Her poems have recently appeared in The Healing Muse, Inlandia Journal and Susurrus Magazine. During 2023, she lived in Tennessee, where she wrote while caring for her daughter through cancer treatments at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. www.stacieeirich.com

Letter to an Estranged Father

3 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Kasumova

Recently, on my way to visit a friend, I drove by Kitty’s Restaurant and Lounge in North Reading. Do you remember the time we went there? It was a Saturday, late summer, either in ‘94 or ‘95, and we’d come from Lawrence where we picked up my school uniform. We stopped by Kitty’s for lunch on the way home. It was a throwback spot: dim lighting, torn booths, cigarette smoke. The bathroom was all red tile and red vinyl and red toilets, like something from a horror movie.

We waited a long time for the food to arrive, and when it did, I remember giggling as I looked down at the brownish steak tip gristle sitting in oil placed in front of me. I don’t remember what you or Mom had, but neither was good. It was one of the worst meals we’d ever had. Comically bad.

I think we left without paying.

Despite the badness of the restaurant this memory is a happy one. We laughed and smiled in unity over the awfulness that was Kitty’s.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the tragic outcome of our family, my mind filling with “whys” and “what ifs” and “if onlys.” Lately though, I’ve begun widening the lens, allowing a little more light in.

Turns out we had our good moments, like bonding over bad meals.

Angela Kasumova is an emerging writer of creative nonfiction with over a decade of experience working in the fields of mental health and education. She lives with her husband and sons near Boston, Massachusetts. Read her first published piece on The Bluebird Word from June 2023: For Sale: Kawai Upright Piano, $1,250.

Ruth and Oscar

12 August 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Townsend

Ruth and Oscar have been married forty years, and they have drawn stares for every one.

Oscar, crafted exclusively of knees and elbows, is the word “jaunty” sprung to life. Eighty-six and five-foot-two, he commands eyes bluer than the Earth from space.

Oscar will neither retire from paid work nor stomach being told that he is in any way impressive. What he will do is elbow you, an instant co-conspirator in this majestic business of being awake, and call you “kid” until you wish it was your given name. His polo shirts are sky and indigo, bright enough to spot him across a century.

Statuesque at seventy-eight, Ruth is a cloud of concern, claiming herself unworthy of her white halo. Her mouth is mournful, and if she didn’t love you, she would distrust you when you insist she is one of the kindest people you know.

But Ruth does love you, almost enough to believe the unfathomable things you believe about her. Proficient in ganache and genealogy, she makes cold rooms feel like dens. She feeds strays, only a few of them feline, and lies awake worrying who might be alone this Thanksgiving. Ruth cried when she learned that introversion is an honest, honorable trait, not a shortcoming.

Oscar and Ruth have toilet paper emblazoned with the face of a political figure.

When Oscar sees me, he hugs me so tight I nearly need to have his elbows surgically removed. Ours was one of those instant bonds that makes you wonder if your families touch fingertips above the treeline. Far beyond DNA, Oscar is family now, equal parts scampish brother and Father Abraham.

Ruth learns through cautious eyes but raced through the pages of my affection like one of her Revolutionary War novels. For ten years she has been perplexed by my admiration, telling me I’m kinder than cats and twice as daft. But when Ruth sees Ruth in my mirror, the truth makes her taller, and she shines like God’s angel in her sturdy denim dress.

On my birthday, Ruth carefully lays out cards on her desktop computer, photos of their cats with wry bylines like, “Sage was going to wish you a happy birthday, but she had to eat her third breakfast instead.” I save every one.

Ruth and Oscar are the rare friends with whom I’ve discussed our rare friendship. None of us has any explanation for why we loved each other so quickly and entirely, only that we are very, very fortunate.

I had to downplay the distress of my divorce to Oscar, who shuddered with tears anyway, lip quivering. “This, to the best person we know!”

But Ruth and Oscar found each other after divorces of their own, pasts they don’t discuss, histories that had to happen for us to have Ruth and Oscar.

Oscar and Ruth give me hope.

Oscar and Ruth had better both reach one hundred years.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place and has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work has appeared or will be published in upcoming issues of The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Fathom Magazine, and Young Ravens Literary Review, among others. Angie loves life dearly.

Roller Coaster

3 July 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Mary Zelinka

It’s 1973 and I’m working at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Denver. I’m twenty-five and at the tail end of my marriage. Only one of our two cars runs at a time and my husband uses it. After we drop our four-year-old Bobby off at the sitter’s at 6:00 AM, he drives me to work. I’m always an hour early. I spend this hour in the bank cafeteria’s kitchen tagging after Velma and her twelve-inch beehive hairdo as she fixes me breakfast and spouts raunchy jokes. This is the best part of my day.

After work, I take the bus home. This is the worst part of my day. Crowds of people jostle for position – if you don’t make the first bus, which I rarely do – you have to wait twenty minutes for the next. Then I’m late picking Bobby up and we have to walk the mile home in the dark.

On this particular summer afternoon as I’m being shouldered about on the sidewalk, I hear a loud voice, thick with accent, “Vitch bus the Elitch Garden? I must to ride famous roller coaster!”

It’s sweltering hot, in the way heat beats down on a city. My thin cotton dress feels damp as my opponents for the first bus press close. But the louder the Voice grows, the wider the space between me and the crowd becomes. Finally, the Voice is right next to me, and, since I haven’t learned (will never learn, actually) not to make eye contact with anyone in the city, he is looking at me right in the eyes.

“Vitch bus the Elitch? I must to ride roller coaster!” I look around at the other bus riders, but everyone keeps their gaze firmly fixed at some point far away. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders at the man.

Deep lines cut through his big square face, his smile wide. He laughs, a great booming laugh. And then, to my increasing anxiety, unbuttons the left cuff of his heavy long-sleeved shirt (how could he wear such a shirt on this hot day?) and begins rolling up his sleeve in an alarming manner.

He flexes his bicep at me and laughs. “Russian! Ninety years! Strong!” Not sure of the proper behavior in this situation, I nod at him and smile.

“I like you!” He’s no taller than I am, but he wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the sidewalk. He tosses me upwards a bit, the way you would a child, and then sets me down. My legs wobble.

“I find the Elitch Garden! Ride roller coaster!” And he marches on down the street just as the first bus sighs to a stop. The crowd shoves past and I’m vaguely aware of the bus leaving without me as I stare after him.

My husband and I divorce not long afterwards. He leaves me the car with the payments and my bus riding days come to an end.

Six months later, I am downtown at night on a date. It’s late and has been snowing. The sidewalks are slick and Jack has his arm around me as we leave the restaurant.

Suddenly a short square man marches up to us, stops, and peers into my face. “You!” He laughs his booming laugh. “I find Elitch! Roller coaster fast!” I laugh with him, but I notice Jack takes his arm from around me and moves a half step away.

“Still strong!” The Russian flexes his bicep at me, thankfully leaving all his clothing securely buttoned. He wraps his arms around me and tosses me upwards. This time my legs do not wobble when he sets me down. He laughs and then marches off into the night.

I look up at Jack, thrilled that he witnessed this event. He had accused me of making the Russian up.

His face has gone dark.

Later I will realize Jack’s reaction accurately foretold my next four years. And by the time I escape him, this dark look has become normal.

But in that moment, watching the Russian materialize through the snow, giant flakes clinging to his hair, his wide smile upon recognizing me, I am so taken with the magicalness of his existence I am filled with joy.

Mary Zelinka lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and has worked at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence for almost 35 years. Her writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Brevity, and Multiplicity.