I've been meaning to write this essay for a while.  Now that I don't have to worry about how many minutes I have left on a public library computer, I can collect my thoughts and set them down.  This subject is personal for me, since I have possession of my husband's and his younger brother's cremated remains and will have them placed in a niche at ( Read more... )

Julia the Elder's fever has broken, finally.  She is being pumped full of antibiotics, and tests are still being administered.  She will need physical therapy as well.  At least some news is good.  I am on standby in case any of her daughter's friends can't make it to help out.

( How I Spent My 50th Birthday )

On my mother's side of the family, those who lived in Santa Clara in Cuba,  I have many second cousins, since one set of my maternal great-grandparents had LOTS of children.  Julia Alverez the elder is my aunt's first cousin.  Julia the younger is her daughter.  The elder Julia was a math teacher when she left Cuba.  She learned English, became a ( Read more... )

I'm at my cousin's, while she recovers from knee surgery.  I just brought her back from the hospital, with a quick side trip to the grocery store for last-minute items before the next snow.  The original plan was to be here through the week, go to Noisemakers on Saturday, then go to my aunt's on Sunday (my half-century mark) and get her to actually ( Read more... )

I showed Brian a sestina roughly two three years ago.  He picked up on the end-word patterns at once and was intrigued by the form.  He had accompanied me to a translation class at Pennsic that year, and was interested in flexing poetic muscles since his physical body was telling him it was time to wind down on fighting.  (If we'd only known.)

He ( Read more... )

Another one leaves us.  Mistress Caitlin Davies.  Oh, I so very much hope that my love is there to hold open the door for her.  Today happens to be the anniversary of the day he chose to request giving up treatment and receive hospice care instead.  He laid his burden down four days later.  I hope Herr Wilhelm Baumhecker is there to usher her in to ( Read more... )

The libraries here only give you an hour per day at their terminals.  (New Jersey ones gave two, some gave four if you were at your local branch.)  But then, less people at any one branch meant you could have more time.  The computers here are set up not to allow cookies for security purposes, and I needed these to send out resumes from ( Read more... )

 I walked down the stairs from the elevated train earlier, slipped on some slush at the bottom step, fell forward, slightly scraped my hands on pavement, and cussed--in Spanish.  The three-syllable c-word that translates directly to, "Hell!" or "Damnation!"  My mother turns over in her urn.  Sorry, Mamá.

The Scene

A long line at a bus station for a bus yet to arrive.  In front of me, a tall, impeccably dressed black woman, good shoes, suit, power purse, perfect coat and hat.  Behind me and a little to one side, a young woman in her late teens or early 20s, and an older woman who might be her mother, of shorter, Middle or Near Eastern mien, in ( Read more... )