DW McKinney Sun Tea When the dust storms dwindle and the air is thick with heat, I pull a 1-gallon jar from the cabinet beside the kitchen sink. My mother gifted me the jar, an imitation of her own,…
Jerrice J. Baptiste The Solution Her belly grew like a basketball not filled with air but with water where a wonderful creature was protected inside a hard like shell. She wanted a baby boy genius. She followed her own…
Mother in Objects – A Folio of Prose and Poetry Our latest Mother Figures folio depicts how objects evoke the mother: our writers explore, in prose and poetry, concrete representations of the essence of a remembered parent. Karren Alenier –…
Linen Hankies by Sarah W. Bartlett Mutti, we called her. That’s the equivalent of “Mom” in German. A title we picked up from our six-month sabbatical in Munich, 1957. The name, having acquired her personality, became my own children’s way…
If the Shoe Fits by Jessica Feder-Birnbaum How can we keep the dead alive? In memory? In spirit? In…deed? What if the dead are larger than life? Like my beloved mother in law Gittel Bat Sarah or more commonly…
A Mother’s Love Comes in All Shapes and Sizes by Corinne de Palma My mother was a quintessential modern woman, beautiful, educated, a leader in her own way, more than a match for my father, who, with his own…
An Imperfect Mother by Joan Leotta One of my early memories is marveling over a statue of Mary, the Mother of Jesus in the corner of my first-grade classroom. The nuns said Mary was the perfect Mother. I learned…
Point-Counterpoint by Linda Murphy Marshall Flip sides of the same coin. Yin and yang. Point, counterpoint. Sisters. Besides their diminutive frames, their oversized intellects, having mothered four children each, they had little in common. Picture my mother. Movie star…
May Day by Heather Haldeman “Hurray! Hurray! It’s the 1st of May. Outdoor sex starts today!” “Mom!” “I know,” she laughed. “You wanted the mother with the bun in the back, the Peter Pan collar and the cross around…
Martina Green McGowan Crafting Beyond the Half-Century Mark Time and Age Time and age come with a certain sense of freedom. Freedom of thought, more risk-taking, a different perspective gained from a long view of life, its attendant…
Wendy Brown-Báez Weathering The Storm In the 1980s, I was part of a group that lived off-grid in the countryside of eastern Oregon. We shared a dilapidated barn, a cabin and a main building on five acres at…
Erin McGuff-Pennington She Knew Nowadays all it takes is Call the Midwife, one glass of wine, and I’m an overflowing tub of emotions, soupy water sloshing over the sides. I doubt there’s an end to it—other than the very end—but…