What Sam Has Taught Me

The Dog Who Wooed at the World cover

This essay was written while I was very ill, years ago. It came from the heart and a fevered mind, and was perfect for this gorgeous anthology by Laura Lee Cascada honoring her pooch with stories of courageous animals. Sam staggers around zombie-like, legs stiff, toes dragging and scraping on the tile floor. His depleted…

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THE FAMILY PORTRAIT, an excerpt

As Michael and I plan our trip to Munich to hear Sieglinde’s story, we take the afternoon to research Lebensborn  and decide if there was any validity to “the Nazi baby-making program.”

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WORC

When I was fifteen, I walked up to the Whataburger on Seminole Boulevard at the edge of our lower middle class neighborhood in Seminole, Florida and applied for a carhop position. My family had moved into a rental house a few months earlier and I needed a job. My stepfather Ted had recently retired after…

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A Daughter’s Journey

Often in the afternoons my father will open a cabinet, and with his gnarled index finger trail the spines of binders filled with catalogued DVDs until he finds one he wants to share with me that day.

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Apple Strudel

The January before her death in 2013, my mother Susi came to Florida to visit me. She was living in my half-sister Jackie’s Colorado home and wanted to get out of the cold and snow for a few weeks. During her visit, we both worked hard to be kind to one another. COPD and emphysema limited her activity; a trip to the grocery store sent her to bed for the afternoon. So we dallied over lunches, settled under the oak trees in the backyard and looked out over the lake.

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The Stranger

Here is a photo of us. I am sitting in her lap; our heads are close together. We are both smiling. No, I am not smiling; I am grinning from ear to ear, holding a black Fury horse with wheels on its feet and a Joey doll on its back. A gift from this woman who says she is my mother. It is Christmas Eve, my fifth one.

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Sleepless in Iceland

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My brain registers an insistent ringing as I groan and roll to the wall in defense. The room is dark as night within light-blocking drapes. I can’t seem to remember where I am. Then… it’s my phone that’s ringing and we’re in a pristine Icelandic guesthouse, the Sulur.

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Fifteen Thousand Miles

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The Taiko drum starts. Thump thump thump. The chanting begins, a breakneck liturgy in an insistent monotone. The timpani accentuates. Clang clang clang.

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Writing the Truth

Maddie Lock

The email from my father began: It is with a heavy heart that I write this… I quickly scanned the German words. My knees buckled as my world plummeted to a depth that had me gasping for air. I understood immediately I had overstepped my writing boundaries.

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Maxhutte Lost

Maxhutte Lost

“Hello, can you help me please,” I implore in my bad German as I skid up to a suited gentleman at a bus stop. He appears startled, and backs further onto the sidewalk. I’m on my Aunt Sieglinde’s garden bike, a sturdy three-speed with no athletic grace and a wire basket on its handlebars.

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