The dress which was sketched out in mama’s diary was real. It was too bad that she wasn’t here to explain the little remnants of herself she’d left behind. Ever since I went to that bank vault and claimed my inheritance, my life had become a nightmare – a labyrinth of questions that would never …
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She’s Gone Dancing
Dodie and I are taking shifts sitting by mama’s bedside in the ICU. Dodie being the “up at the crack of dawn” kind of person, takes the morning shift and I the afternoon. We meet for dinner in town and both of us visit her in the evening, carrying on conversations to the cadance of …
Missing
“What do you mean, by missing?” Francis snapped back at her sister Lenora on the phone. “Just that. He’s missing,” Lenora sniffed. This was the last thing she needed, Francis thought. She had a houseful of guests who had just sat down to a very late Thanksgiving dinner with dried-out turkey because …
WHITE PEOPLE DON’T GET TO DECIDE THAT NATIVE AMERICAN MASCOTS ARE NOT RACIST
When I was about six-years old, my dark-skinned great-aunt, Rose told me that her mother (my great-grandmother) was a Micmac Indian, or as she said, “Indian Princess”. She spoke to me in words that were supposedly Micmac which I have long forgotten, and I immediately became smitten with anything “Indian”. It was 1961, and nobody …
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ESCAPE
Prelude: A short piece originally preceded by a more substantial work, also an orchestral introduction to opera, however not lengthy enough to be considered an overture. “Can’t see a God damned thing,” he mumbled out loud while trying to wipe the condensation from the windshield. “Should have gotten that cataract surgery they nagged me about.” …
SWIMMING LESSONS
When I was growing up in the early 1960’s, every kid that I went to school with took swimming lessons at Stevie’sPond. Poor kids who lived across the tracks close to the mills, the scattered children of care-takers who lived on the large estates and the farm kids on the east side of town all …
The Bear-Ass Detective
Farming is not easy. Crops are dependent on the weather, and you never know when you might get wiped out by too much rain or drought. If you farm organically, like we do, your crops are vulnerable to invasive species like the gypsy moths that mowed down four rows of our blueberries a few …
THE MEASURE OF DOGS
I don’t know what it is about dogs and why we love them so fiercely, or why we can’t go about our lives without them. I know that I can’t seem to find my compass without a dog in my life. My dog companions enable me to map the territory of the heart, and when …
That Old Dixie Flag Revised
Donna Dufresne I love the Quiet Corner of Connecticut – the soft, rolling hills dotted with farms, the little villages accented by white steeples and general stores, the pockets of a rural past. In fact, when I first came to this part of the state, I immediately felt at home. I befriended a series …
THAT REBEL JESUS
My Jesus is the image taken from the Shroud of Turin. He is a dark-skinned, bearded Jew with a magnificent schnoz. He is not that northern European guy we all grew up with. The haloed, angelic, light-skinned, goldilocks with his blue eyes rolled toward heaven. In fact, I imagine him to be more like Chez …
STARDUST 1958
I might not be able to tell you what I had for dinner a few days ago, and I might not remember your name, but I sure as heck can dig up the most obscure details about your family history and my own. My memory has always been funny that way. I’ve never been …
REFLECTING THE LAKE
Donna Dufresne The lake glistens in the dark, reflecting the red beacon that guards Weir Hill from airplanes. There are small yellow lights from all the houses that have popped up like unwanted puffballs in what was once a wild and lonely shore, and that rose colored wash in the sky never grows dark …
THAT FELLER’S AWFUL OLD
Mr. Beaty is back! His shack at the end of our road has been forlorn all summer in its emptiness. The grass has grown tall around his rusty old Ford Gremlin, and the cats have scattered to the barn across the street. In June, he called Andrea Cunningham to say that he’d lost …