Clerestory

Sunset, palm trees, and chicken on the grill - these three ingredients should have made for a perfect evening.

Cherished family memories ground and bond us, enriching our lives in ways nothing else can.

That hot June night, my mother made me ride with her in the dark blue Dodge out to Route 38, what we thought of as “the highway.”

What a dinner Monica has prepared for us. First, she and Allesandro and the younger couple with the baby girl, bowls of snacks and a glass of local red wine in the shade of the towering fig tree.

When I was a girl, I knew only one thing about Loop 360: it was the road that took my family to the barbecue restaurant overlooking Bull Creek

Years before I went to restaurants with dishes like “scallop mousse” and “seaweed gremolata” on the menu, I was a Jersey girl who loved bagels.

I cleaned out the cookware cabinet in my kitchen. Marie Kondoed it. 

The gutter overflowed with brown, spiky husks like the aftermath of a tiny urchin apocalypse.

What could she have wanted with all of those empty containers, so meticulously cleaned and stored so haphazardly around the house?

Plenty of potatoes, garlic and lamb. Bundles of sage and jugs of harsh red wine.

I know you would remember every tea, we sipped in New York, Philadelphia, Toronto—blurred, now, to Earl Grey for me.

The pistils stand on end—thin red reeds, in a tiny glass bottle.

I can't hear the TV news over the soothing static of diced onion in the pan.

The tomatoes cool themselves, in the long breezes, hoarding in their flesh, fabulous waters.

Haven't we all been cut into halves? One half empathy, one half what the hell.

No amount of mother’s food or drink could give her comfort.

Put yeast in a cup with hot water and sugar.  Sift...

Her shadow on the barn, cast by winter-weary sun, is taller than a five-year-old.

Cucumbers sprawling in garden, insects tickling yellow flowers, we grow together.

She, holding ladle, wanting, no, needing to help.

Dressed up like an armadillo rolled into a ball, the avocado ripens on the sill.

Old man Peesel’s cherry orchard, of the empty prairie, the fruit reddened our fingers, lips...

For my grandmother, fat was a solution, not a problem: my grandmother’s miracles employed bacon fat and lard.

A reflection in ten steps

Last fall, my dad showed me five three-ring binders he kept in his home office. Each was filled with original handwritten letters, many of them yellowed with age and written by my great-grandfather

On the shelves in the back of room 211, our US History books waited at rest.

How did you know, dear dish, that you were ready to mend? What caused the old shatters? Is a shard a body, too? 

Cleveland was the place we went back to. Like homing pigeons or salmon returning to spawn. Cleveland felt like no other place, not home exactly, but something separate and apart.

It is not always a guilt-and-punishment salve to put over what’s been hurting. 

At 18 years old, sitting in my prison cell, I was very lonely. I had just been sentenced to 241 years in prison.

Vicenza became Genevieve when she landed on American soil at the turn of the century.

The George Eliot Fellowship greeted my second cousin and myself in Nuneaton with hot tea, biscuits, and a copy of every book that George Eliot had ever written.

All that remains of Gridley’s store is some time-curled paper copies of these supposed facts recorded by someone associated with the State of Connecticut Historical Commission for the Historic Resources Inventory and haphazardly shoved in a purple file folder marked “House Documents” by me.

Tape recorder on, I tried interviewing my 75–year old grandmother for a 6th grade school project. “I can’t talk about it,” my Bubbe said in her Russian-English accent.

Thrown into a boat to be tossed between two worlds . . .

That December, the dust did not settle properly on his sister's graveyard.

Once upon a time… all history books should begin like a fairytale. 

On day three of 2022, I found myself giving our Christmas tree the stink eye, its presence a reminder of our Covid-stricken holiday season.

In the summer of 1997, at five years old, I place my grubby little fingers on a thin trunk, the grey bark slightly soft beneath my palms. . .

I am the daughter of Cambodian Genocide survivors.

In July of 1998, on a high school auditorium stage in central New Jersey, I played the starring role of Mirabai, a 16th century Hindu bhakti poet and mystic, in a semi-classical Indian dance drama.

I have often felt, throughout my life, that activism was a “given,” meaning that it was something I was expected to do.

Once I was in New York with my partner. The MOMA was closing in 30 minutes, so we decided to pay full price to see Starry Night.

When winter rolled around and the other kids were busily cutting paper snowflakes, I was drawing circle snowmen and triangle Christmas trees...

The night of your baptism, your native name sounded like a bullet, lodging itself beneath your tongue...

I am a former refugee, and a tea fanatic, living in Ottawa, Canada. When I rented my first house in the city, I understood that my love for African tea would be a trigger for racism.

The hot, muggy Maryland summers of my childhood were filled with outdoor activity. Some of this time was spent, willingly or not, helping out in the family garden.

In the celestial port of the Soul at the crossroads between Life and Death - or is this just a dream? - she waits . . .

From the beginning of time, people have faced tragedies. Why do some adapt better than others? It's the history of my family that encourages me.