I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale’s (the original one) a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door. Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call. (read more @ Free Range Kids)

He’s alone in the lobby of the Chinese joint on the corner. He kicks a plastic ball — the big, colorful kind you buy at the dollar store for fifty cents — against the wall, and he focuses intently as it travels back to him. He pauses as I walk in, and resumes as soon as I’m safely at the counter. The woman who took my order when I used to come here every weekend finishes shoving sodas in the big refrigerator, and turns to a face she doesn’t remember. She’s aged more than a year in the past year. She looks tired and worried. Her small breasts jut frantically beneath the stained white t-shirt that shields her slender frame. She looks as if she hasn’t known happiness for a very long time. (more…)

I was 13? 14? I don’t remember, although it was only a few years ago. I was either a freshman in high school, or an eighth grader. I’m a senior in high school now, and looking back, my memories from then seem shrouded and indistinct with time.

I was going to a concert at the legendary Stone Pony on the Jersey shore. The Kottonmouth Kings were playing, along with several acts I neither knew nor cared about. To be honest, I didn’t even care about the Kottonmouth Kings all that much, I just wanted to go to a concert. It sounded so cool and grown up, and held echoes of adulthood. (more…)

I’m suspicious of people that won’t let me email them the job. That insist on meeting, face to face. That insist. I’m suspicious of people that insist

He took the folder from me and motioned for me to sit, which I did, which I welcomed, after that long walk up Columbus Avenue, after writing and driving and parking and walking instead of emailing

He opened the folder and looked at the page, his hands showing he would flip through quickly, but hesitated. Hesitated. Waiting. Reading. He sat back. Then back a little farther. Then relaxing. I looked at my manicure, and my shoes, and my watch. I looked at his desk, and his tie, and his wedding ring. His eyes were locked. He was really reading. Not thumbing though it. Not checking it over. He was really reading it. Each Word. (more…)

The first thing the doctor said when I was born wasn’t “it’s a perfect baby girl” or anything similar to that.

It was “Oh no, her hand…”

I was born with a malformation of my left hand, which pretty much means I have no fingers, the beginning of knuckles and little nubby things.

I was the only one who didn’t cry at my birth. The first thing my father ever said about my future was, “How will she ever get married with one hand?”

The doctors then proceeded to give my mom a private room and a steak and lobster dinner as a “condolence.” I think it’s funny that my mom got a free steak and lobster out of the whole ordeal–at least something good happened. (more…)