Eighteen months ago, on a brilliant fall day, the sky cerulean with nary a cloud visible, my 16-year-old son was driving, while I rode shotgun on the way to his step-sister’s softball tournament. I was still getting used to him driving with his learner’s permit while I did my best…

“To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage enough, and to spare.” Benjamin Franklin — At dusk, I pulled into the parking lot of Carrier Clinic, a privately-run psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. I felt like the raw, vulnerable version of myself I had been when Dad first pulled into the same parking lot the summer before I started Kindergarten, only this time I was…

What a mother 2020 is turning out to be, huh? Pandemic, mystery seeds from China, Tik Tok controversy, presidential election, political divides, and racial tensions. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been on a rollercoaster ride for the last five months, and not a short-lived, fun-filled ride, but more one that makes you puke when the coaster rolls into the station. — Shortly after the pandemic began, New Jersey was inundated with COVID-19 cases and I found myself unexpectedly working from home. I was excited by the prospect of having three hours of commute time to use in more productive ways than sitting in NJ highway traffic. I was excited to be…

After the prongs of honesty I threw and you returned, Pierced our white, underbelly flesh, We sat in silence as the clock we never hear Tick-tocked its way to the next moment. Earlier I had decided to let frankness tumble from my lips Instead of the routine, dry retreat of…

Mom came home that summer from another stay in a mental hospital, stiff like a cardboard cut-out in the New Jersey oppressive humidity. I tried to let the heat thaw out the thick layers of frosty protection that had accumulated around my heart to welcome her home but, trusting her seemed risky. — I was beginning to understand I had two moms. One was loving, kind, warm, patient, understanding, consistent, and fun. The other was irrational, cruel, unpredictable, terrifying, and possibly possessed by the devil from time to time. …

Grandma appeared after Mom had vanished into the mental health system void again. — The bare ends of our feelings were sensitive, raw, and exposed. Grandma’s presence was like a pair of wire strippers, hastily exposing them further. She was bending over near the back door — the same door that our supposedly dead father had walked through only nights before — shaking her…

When the lockdown in my state of New Jersey started, I wrote this nice little essay about how great the pandemic could be for our family because we would have all this glorious extra time. How wrong I was! — Here we are into week 5 of the lockdown and here’s how it’s going: Working from home is hard when kids are also attending classes online. My mornings usually begin quietly. I get up first, let the kids sleep in a bit since they don’t have to log into school…