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UN-Fishing
I’m an introvert. I like peace and quiet. Alone is my natural state. I also love nature. The wind in the trees, the smell of dirt, the bugs, the very flora and fauna of it all. It grounds me. You’d think I’d love fishing. I probably would, but for the fact that my stepfather loved…
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“Whine, whine, whine!”
I can still hear my stepfather’s voice in my head, clear as a bell. Whenever I got upset about something when I was little, that’s what he’d say. It would infuriate me. I didn’t have the words to express it at the time, but what it said to me was, “I don’t care about your…
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Apple Butter
I once asked my mother why on earth she married my stepfather, a man she never really loved, who caused untold amounts of destruction in our lives and was destined to have a negative impact on me long after his death, and she said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Don’t all…
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Views from my Windows—Part Two
For the beginning of this story, check out part one. No matter our circumstances, my mother never let it be a question in my mind that I’d be pursuing higher education. She wanted more for me than she ever had herself. I got scholarships and loans and grants and she helped me as much as…
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Views from my Windows—Part One
One of my first memories of any type of view was the sagging wooden third floor balcony of our shabby tenement apartment. I lived in fear of this view, because every time I stepped out of the house it was a certainty that our neighbor would be lying in wait. She was this loud old…