My first nickname was Awie, not the gooiest name as it falls onto the ear, but it was mine. Brother #1, two years younger than me, came up with the name when he was first learning to talk and couldn’t navigate the L or R in Laura. Awie stuck with the durable adhesive of childhood nicknames even though it had a narrow circumference. Awie was solely a family...
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In mid-January, a post from something called Februllage appeared in my Instagram stream. The post was dominated by a calendar of February with a word for each day. Beside the calendar, a small B&W collage of a schoolgirl wearing a hand-drawn crown and hoisting a pair of scissors significantly larger than her head. I clicked onto the post and read...
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Although Buffalo Park was a slip and slide mud festival after last week’s snowfall, I walked a mid-day lap on Sunday. People who had driven up the hill to see the snow clustered around the entry to the park, squealing as they made snowballs and snapped photos. I sloshed alone through the melting snow patches on the Nate Avery trail. About a half hour in, I...
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The year after I graduated from high school, I crisscrossed the U.S. in a flotilla of Greyhound buses with about 150 people my age. We were one of three traveling casts of Up With People, a wholesome performance troupe singing across small town America and spreading a message of global goodwill. I wasn’t selected because of my superior pipes or formal...
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It is the 1960s, and I am five. I’m with my mother in our suburban bathroom, watching her apply makeup. I am mesmerized. And I am imprinted. She holds her Maybelline oval cake of eyeliner under the faucet and coaxes a few drops of water, swirls it with a tiny brush, and swooshes it atop her lash line. She dabs at her nose with a powder puff. She...
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