Kathy Curto Cool and Low in the 70s The pills are moist and a little swollen. My mother carries them into my room using the bottom of her apron as a shovel. Picture this: an apron, stained in all the right and wrong places, with gravy, grease and grime, now being used as a fabric dustpan for tiny, pink pills. That’s what she calls them, his ulcer pills. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” I chirp, acting like a highfalutin bigshot shaking my head, my hand on my hip. I’m about twelve. “For Chrissakes,” my mother says, “stop carrying…
Author: Mom Egg Review
Susan Finch How to Mourn Your Father When You’re a Mom Sometimes you cry while driving to school and soccer practice and basketball practice and the PTO meeting and the doctor’s appointment and the dentist’s appointment and the spring band concert (where a colleague will offer condolences for your loss and then ask immediately how your father died. Tell him the softest version of the story, he never woke up from surgery, but not about the brutal days in the ICU where your father was in constant care, and you witnessed all the failed efforts to save him). Sometimes…
Alisha Goldblatt Tracing the Faultlines We can’t choose our family, of course, nor is the warmth and reliability of our neighbors ever a guarantee. But somehow on this street of mostly transplanted now-Mainers, we won the lottery. Never mind that behind our home is a hideous chain-link barrier (no good fences here), and the residents in that house obsess over boundaries and water drainage; the homes we face are full of the best people. After my Zoom conference with the geneticist, it was a welcome relief to head out to one of their lake houses about an hour north…
Tatiana Johnson Boria Saturn After each visit to your grandmother’s group home, over the past two decades, I’ve learned the art of capturing. Of forcing my mind to remember my mother in all of her dimensions. I use these memories to fill in the gaps her absence. The months on end where I can’t reach her or can’t visit because of distance and not having the strength to. I use pictures to aid my remembering, just as I do to capture your growing. I scour my aunt’s attic and find images of my mother from before I was born.…
Tamara J. Madison Dispatch My mother suffered Beauty, having so much of it, being sought after, suitors lined and vying for her attention. What to do with all that fineness? It must have been a lot of upkeep to be the “Audrey Hepburn” of her community. Yes, she had the album from the soundtrack, Breakfast at Tiffany’s with big hazel-eyed Audrey on the cover with her hair immaculately coiffed, strands of pearls pertly placed, and an extended cigarette holder perfectly poised. With so many accessories to choose, I imagine her assistant and wardrobe consultant picked them for her while…
Lisa Moak Bonding With Stone My mother was a go-go dancer, or so I was told. I never met my mother. I doubt she was allowed to hold me before I was whisked away to foster care, then adopted. I know she died of an overdose in Dallas in 1979. I’ve also seen her senior yearbook photo, which showed a beautiful, platinum blonde girl with a button nose. The text underneath included her hobbies, like pep and choir, but it didn’t reveal the reason for the pain in her eyes. For only $69 to a DNA testing site, the…
Elizabeth H. Winkler Love Languages My mother irons my pillowcases, smoothing their wrinkles into sharp edges—crisp. There is a poem in that. An essay, too, and maybe even a song. I want to tell her there’s no need; I don’t ever do this for myself and please don’t go to extra trouble and all this work won’t make any difference once I’ve slept on them. But this is a poem and a song and I know what I love you looks like, so I don’t say these things to her. Instead, I smile. I say thank you. I say…
Heddy Breuer Abramowitz After Nursing Heddy Breuer Abramowitz is an artist living and working in Jerusalem. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Holocaust survivors, she was a long-term resident of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. Mostly an observational painter, she has strong interests in drawing, collage, and street photography. Recurrent themes include urban landscape, Jerusalem beyond the cliché, introspective self-portraits, the Jewish woman, and the Holocaust as legacy. She created a graphic medical memoir, Life-tumbled Shards. For more see: https://heddyabramowitz.com/
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor The Grand Days of Noho Star for Kathy Engel Dear Kathy I miss our poetry brunches at Noho Star our talks on MFA programs children spouses mothers finances manuscripts submission guidelines— I miss our San Pellegrino flat radish onion and avocado salad at Noho Star we enjoyed fried onions in a spicy mango chutney it was there that I tried Blue Moon beer for the first time with two orange slices she gave me not one but two orange slices and who ever heard of Mexican pizza with raw eggs on top or fried shrimp with garlic eggplant…