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…

Sea Glass I am like sea glass Washed upon the craggy shores of Maine Tumbled smooth and dull By the turbulent sea A body full of other’s need and want of me A tide so strong it broke me Into tiny bits of colored treasure Left purposeless and buried Among…

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…

Inky brazen haze Where thoughts are absent The strangulating coil Of restraint. They wend loosely, Unfettered, Whispering veracity. A ghost purring longings for home Surreptitiously in your ear. A place where truth becomes slow-rising light Filtered through paned glass, Disassembling one intricate piece at a time. Fragments of truth deftly…

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. It was difficult to love the good one when I knew the other one…

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…