Someday I’ll tell you how I lost my voice, but I’m thinking, not today. I always knew he had a soft hold on the world from the minute he was born. So I watched over him better than anyone else. Even better than our mother, who loved to tell trash like “A gypsy told me…
Category: recollections
Teen Andie: In the Flow & Fried Chicken
Fried anything is good. Fried chicken is irresistible. Add the announcement, coupled with plates piled high with three big pieces, a glob of creamy mashed potatoes with a well of gravy in the middle, more dribbling down the sides of the crater into a side of corn. Three plates stacked on my left arm, one in my right, moving within inches past these greedy noses quivering in my wake…
Ken & Andie Story 8/9
October 6th, we drove around and ended up with fried chicken. This time it wasn’t so nice. Around O’hare airport were lots of clubs, all kinds, some beautiful hotels and restaurants, and many seedy strip clubs. There was a section of north Irving Park road, where the flight crews rented and sublet their pads. Couldn’t…
Ken & Andie Story 7/9
I think I began to feel guilty for Ignoring him. For sticking him with the endless drama that was the package and parcel of my mother. I actually felt a bit sorry for him. He had endurance, that was for sure. So I talked to him and agreed to go out with him. He said…
Ken & Andie Story 6/9
Ken & Andie part 6 It’s the undertaker kid Ken. He drove here in the hearse bringing us more thank you cards. We had such a big funeral , we must need more cards he says. I watch from the hallway to my room. It’s a small house, you can hear everything. I let my…
Ken & Andie Story 5/9
My family of three, and only three now, not four, walked out of the double doors leading to the awaiting cars. Shiny black Cadillacs, the leader without a back roof in order to hold large wreaths and sprays of carnations, chrysanthemums, and occasional roses entwined with wire and forced into unnatural and hard shapes. Forms…
Ken & Andie Story 4/9
Ken & Andie (part 4) It was a two day wake and visitation. Hundreds of people came, so many from our school, work friends and customers. Some because they cared. Some who fed on the macabre, hoping to see a mangled body. Some who fed on other peoples sorrow and drank their tears like nectar….
Ken & Andie Story 3/9
I kept the same shift at the diner after graduation, and continued to work so I could save money. August 23rd I had a dream that was so graphic and strange. I woke up very disturbed and went to work. It would not leave my mind, so I wrote it down hoping it would leave…
Ken & Andie Story 2/9
I went to work at the insurance agency. It was a nice office, but very small. Just two private spaces, three desks, back to front like school desks. Behind them was the bank of black file cabinets. There were two ways to enter the office, from the side entrance after descending a long stairway, or…
Ken & Andie Story 1/9
Ken & Andi story (part one) So here we are driving to the ortho today for my post surgical. I’m not supposed to drive yet, so Ken is driving me, it feels exactly like he first drove me a zillion years ago. He still drives with his hands in the middle of the wheel and…
Palacsinta
Two hands are required. One to hold it to your mouth, the other to hold the tail end as you eat your way through it. Usually, the first ones off the pan never make it to the rolling plate, we would just hold the transparent circle of cooked dough and peel pieces from it. The crunchier edges, give way to the softer, springier middle. My brother and I were like little birds, waiting for morsels from the mother bird.
Little Andie. Konini street. Nelson Library Refuge
Walking home from school as a little girl in Nelson, I would stop at the library, or the little shop that sold magazines, toys, cards, and things. There were other bookshops, but too far out of the way to get home somewhat on time. I looked up the Nelson library, but things have changed and…
Chicks & Jam 