Summer is my season of Daddy. Most of the time, he was a restless man, my father, with a permanent expression of perplexity on his face. Relaxation was beyond his ken. He was in constant motion every waking minute of every day. Stress seeped from his pores and put us…

It was 2003, and my sweet baby cousin Adriana was getting married in San Francisco. The wedding was a big deal. Though a small destination wedding, it was a momentous occasion. Our entire extended family — including our celebrity cousin — would converge, and friends of Adriana’s from all over…

When I was very young, my father was afflicted with a strange kind of wanderlust that impelled him to move his growing family often. We lived in eleven homes before I was nine. Fortunately for me, in those early postwar years, as they adjusted to their American lifestyle and learned…

“Well!” My friend Nick stood in front of his boss’s Ferrari, glaring at me. Then he laughed. “Okay. You’re going. But you gotta wear flowers in your hair.” He leaned over to the little garden in front of my apartment building, plucked a hydrangea stem, and stuck it awkwardly into…

When I was young, Reader’s Digest, a subscription to which my 9 thGrade English teacher included in her yearly syllabus, ran a feature called “My Most Unforgettable Character.” It was the monthly’s most popular feature, and I wrote a few character sketches and thought one day I would submit one…

In the third week of my second year of college, I decided I had to drop out. I told the registrar at the University of New Mexico I was pregnant so I could collect my tuition money and run away to New York with my boyfriend. We were both gold-green…

Gender Confusion Ever wonder why Baby Boomer women are not all hip to gender dysphoria and its complex new requirements? Most of us have had our own bouts of confusion. Being female had so many pitfalls. What Freud called Penis Envy came from varied experiences, most of which proved that we would…

. . . any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. John Donne 1624 Back in December, 2014, the day after the Newtown Massacre, I wrote about my own experience with a…

Rachel Louise Snyder’s Women We’ve Buried, Women We’ve Burned One of my favorite workshops to teach is something I call “Acting for Writers.” It’s a class that investigates how to put ourselves in closer touch with our sense and emotional memory, the way actors do. After all, I explain, actors…