An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
An Ozark Family: Wesley McNair’s The Lost Child (Part 1 of 3) When we first moved to Kansas City, Missouri, years ago, the city seemed not much different from cities I’d known on the east coast. That is, until one … Continued
When my sister visited from Boston last week, we dragged out the family albums and letters. Really, it’s only one side of the family that’s represented, and only one letter writer–our North Dakota grandmother, our mother’s mother Augusta. We knew … Continued
There was expectation to the evening, a low-level hum of overcast sky and awkward bird call. At first I was going to walk the neighborhood. But along the drive, shoots were being strangled in last year’s leaves. Pawing aside and … Continued
So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches’ … Continued
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I’ve known since my earliest memories. My father’s first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother … Continued
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran’s mother had died in Tennessee.Fran, … Continued
Yesterday in a belated Father’s Day celebration, my step-daughter (she the math teacher, she with the 9-month-old boy) took her dad and me to Target Field to watch the Twins. It was hot. The Twins were not. But we were … Continued
My adorable, second-cousin Eleonora has a small apartment in assisted living. She is 94. When she and her sister Sadie moved to this Presbyterian Homes complex–regular apartments, cottages, assisted living, and the “health center”–in 1998, they were still vigorous. Eleonora … Continued
You could tell my mother was fading because she became pale. She no longer remembered visitors’ names as she walked the porch across her South Carolina house. She slept and slept. Eleonora, my 94-year-old second cousin, is fading too. But … Continued