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going grey
Behind the Facade, The Thirty-Third Week of the Second Year in the New Abnormal
Growing up my mother and her mother were sticklers for good manners. I made a point of saying please and thank you. I was afraid they would view me as rude, and I didn’t want that moniker. My grandmother would point out other children who might have been louder than us, or publicly whiny, and she’d use those children as cautionary tails of behavior we were to stringently avoid.
Train Delay, The Twenty-First Week of the Second-Year in the New Abnormal
_w140_h140/IMG_7053(1)_05280311.jpg "Train Delay, The Twenty-First Week of the Second-Year in the New Abnormal")
The Q train came to a halting stop. An announcement immediately came on asking “Who pulled the emergency cord?” At the end of our car, a good citizen thinking there was a request to pull the cord, got up from her seat, pulled the cord, even as the train stood idle. She sat back down returning to her book. A hardcover, old school, though she looked barely 25.
Be Gone the Bygone, The Eighth Week of the Second Year in the New Abnormal
Years ago I had a phone book. It looked like a fabric-covered hardback, divided by letters of the alphabet neatly cut into tabs descending on the paper’s edge. Often the pages were outlined in gold ink. I’d get an updated one every few years and I’d transfer the names, addresses, and phone numbers into my new, usually colorful, phone book. These were also the days in which long distance phone calls were a big deal and we were reminded to speak quickly since we were being charged by the minute. Phones had cords and were strategically placed in one or more locations in our homes. A bygone era. Yes, I have become a senior stereotype.
Awards, Week Thirteen in the New Transition
Though award shows don’t hold the same cache as they did in my childhood, this weekend is the Academy Awards. Fraught with politics and self-promotion, the awards have lost some of their shimmer. Yet, while growing up I wrote and rewrote my acceptance speeches. It was my fantasy of ultimate success. If I felt insignificant or hurt, my bright future would prove to the world I was somebody. My bullies would see I was special. That was my secret revenge.
My Shade of Gray
Like my dad, I went gray at an early age. Like my mom, this wasn’t something I...
