When I was in third grade, my grandmother and I began writing letters to one another. She lived with a smelly dachshund in a cottage on Mobile Bay in southern Alabama. I was her oldest grandchild growing up in a swarm of siblings in south Florida. I can’t recall the contours of her face with much clarity, but in the eye of my mind I can see her looping...
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Water is my mother tongue. I grew up on a flat patch of landfill just north of Palm Beach called Singer Island, a place named after the 23rd child of Isaac Singer, the sewing machine millionaire. My family lived a blemish-free, resolutely middle-class life two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. What I remember most about my childhood is the milky blue-green...
Read MoreThe solstice has arced through and left its promises of light and longer days. Christmas, Boxing Day and Hanukkah are in the past tense, and once again we inch our way toward the trailhead of another year. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m done with the resolution business. All those lists taped to the fridge, the scoldy shoulds hidden beneath...
Read MoreI’m not alone. There are others out there, but we’re a formless group with no T-shirts, no password, no secret handshake. We don’t have a 12-step program, a 10k run to fund research for our cause or celebrity endorsements. We live among you, as unseen by others as we can be to ourselves. We’re misunderstood, often misidentified,...
Read MoreI must have been in my late 20s when my mom and I started playing Scrabble together. Even though I fancied myself a wordsmith and trafficked in language for a living, I was a listless and half-hearted player, intimidated by my mom’s skill. To distance myself from the possibility I might not do well, I mocked the game. Goofy little tiles and point scoring:...
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