I shift from side to side in the bed and punch at the pillows. I spray lavender into the air. The fan hums a white noise lullaby, yet sleep evades me. I fight it at first, but soon I begin to cry. It is not long before my eyes are so puffy that the tears…

We sit nestled under an umbrella. The late August sun peeks out around us. We are jabbering relentlessly because far too many years have passed between us. The waiter stops to take our order only to be ushered away while we chat some more. For me there are not enough hours in this visit. I…

It is not long after I start my divorce that things get even more complicated and I am feeling a mixture of fear and hope. I hear a knock at the door. It is my friend. I will call her, “Rosalita.” In she walks, hands dripping with friendship filled gifts to ease my pain. I…

My large family is competing for air space around the dining table. I am comfortable here. Actually I am happy here. I glance at my uncle and I see, that he too, is happy in this space. The food is trademark yummy and is being tossed back and forth. For a moment, here and there…

I ease into my Friday with e-mails as I text an old friend. I meet her for the first time when I am twenty-three. I open the door of our rental in the Pennsylvania mountain’s and find her on the couch swiping nail polish across her fingers. I, ever the one to make a fuss…

  “What do you think it takes to have a successful marriage?” asks my niece. I will call her, “Ariel,” because she deserves a Disney Princess type of name. Now I have certainly logged some hours ‘noodling’ this puzzle in the past. However, ‘love’ is an impossibly simple, yet impossibly complex subject. In my marketing…

This past November, I sat outside with the slight chill of early winter rushing through the air. There were six of us, old friends noshing on food and filling up with laughter. A few weeks later, I pull my car alongside my mailbox, pull the door down and snatch the mail. I spy a handwritten…

A firefighter, a cop and a priest all walk into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a great joke, right? Nah, that would be my Irish Catholic family walking into my Uncle Barney’s bar in New York. All those New York City cops and firefighters, and of course, my beloved uncle, the priest taught…

In the middle of some of my worst marital woes I find myself sitting on the white sandy beaches of Florida. The sheer, turquoise water in front of me as my feet inch their way into the white sand. It is the kind of hot day reserved for the gulf coast with enough of a…

I don’t know what my mom was thinking when she dropped me off in front of my Catholic elementary school. When she put this overly rule following, people pleasing girl in that grey plaid uniform, white shirt and criss cross tie and sat me behind that desk in first grade. I believed it all……hook, line…

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