Tag: Home

• March 5, 2012

  On walking home from school

  I said, “If ever I have a girl, I would like to name her Marilynne. Wouldn’t that be something?” She said, “I think it would be something if you could name a daughter Marilynne.” I must have been 8 years old when I first started walking home from school. That would have put me in…
• February 17, 2012

  When Lois came to stay

  From Monday evening to Thursday afternoon, Lois came to stay with us. She keeps her things–fresh linens, washed towels, extra toiletries–stored in two boxes in the back of the unused closet in David’s old study. She brings three bags, as well as a large purse, with her. Joan tells me she went through a box…
• January 23, 2012

  At home with Joan

  If it’s before 9 a.m. and the doorbell rings, I hurry down the stairs to get it. If it’s after 9, then I assume Joan is up and around, sitting in the kitchen, reading the New York Times as the light comes in through the front window. Upstairs in my treetop home, I loiter with my…
• December 28, 2011

  On night visions and homecomings

  On the way to the airport well before dawn, my middle sister told me about the recurring nightmares she’d had when she was a girl. There was the one about the angry man with the red eyes. The one about my mother who’d become the mean witch from the Wizard of Oz. And the one…
• December 23, 2011

  On Anne Page’s courage

  The woman was beautiful and strong but sad. Doubtless she married badly. Evidence for this can be perceived in her slightly downcast left eye; in her stilted, rigid left hand; in the spine that gives the impression of needing to be held up by strength of will. To one with her aesthetic temperament, life had…