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Malcah and Chayym Zeldis, Israel, 1949
Below is a brief excerpt from the story “Capricorn Rising,” which will appear in the spring issue of the American Literary Review. I am working on a collection of stories very loosely based on the lives of my parents (see above), Americans who lived in Israel from 1949 to 1958. I was born in Chadera, Israel, in 1957 and although I did not grow up there, the country nonetheless … Continue Reading
You’ve heard the term, that’s for sure. Maybe you’ve even said it. As in, “Oh, she’s just a lapdog” or “I would never want a lapdog.” Like it’s an insult of some sort. Or even a curse. Sorry to say, lapdogs have gotten a bad rap, and it hardly seems fair.
Full disclosure: I’ve owned a lapdog for the past four years. She’s a purebred Pomeranian, with tiny paws, tiny teeth, and a tiny, foxy face. She weighs all of eight pounds, and she is never happier than when she is in someone’s—okay, usually my—lap. She will sit on my lap … Continue Reading
My son has been gone not quite a month; his first year in college started on September 3. I’ve been trying to adjust his absence; it has not been easy. Here are some first thoughts on the experience.
Today we dropped our firstborn off at college. Hardly a remarkable event in the scheme of things, but one that to me is both seismic and powerful; it will reconfigure both the family structure and all of our places in it. Yet there was little overt drama to the day, which proceeded without impediment.
The drive to Connecticut was easy, the weather golden and … Continue Reading
My father abandoned me more than twenty years ago. This was not an act that came without warning: he had divorced my mother in a spite-filled, accusation hurling frenzy some years earlier, and in the process I had gone from being an adored girl who found constant favor in his eyes to a bewildered young woman who realized with dismay that I would never find favor there again. Still, it was a shock to learn, through old family friends, that my father—who had remarried three months to the day that his divorce from my mother became final—had moved … Continue Reading
More on the subject of college…My son’s imminent departure is bringing it all back home, and I find myself thinking a lot about those years. Here’s a story that began when I was a senior, but whose ending is still unfolding.
By the beginning of my final year as undergraduate, I had decided not only to major in art history, but to apply to graduate school as well. My advisor encouraged me to take German; it was essential for graduate study in my field and I might as well get an early start. I knew she had only my welfare in … Continue Reading
This past June, my son both graduated from high school and turned eighteen. In the fall, he will head off to college, just as my daughter enters her freshman year of high school. These milestones—and they are major—in their young lives have nudged me into recalling my own high school and college years, with all their attendant highs and lows. Teachers were major players in that drama because teachers were the adults to whom you shifted your admiration, loyalty and allegiance on the road to becoming an adult. Apart from a few duds, most of my teachers were good, and … Continue Reading
