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All the Moon I Need

By |November 4th, 2015|

My mother is in hospice care. She is suffering from congestive heart failure. She will not again come to dinner at my house or spend Christmas with us. But on and off in these hours and days, we are offered a quality of time and experience that I have never known. When my mother was [...]

How Having a Baby Made Me a Feminist

By |November 4th, 2015|

It wasn’t until I became pregnant in 1980 (I was 26) that I became “little lady” and “honey.” In my doctor’s office in Atlanta. With little bunnies on the wall. I had not had bunnies on the wall ever, not even as a girl. Floral yellow curtains yes, but not bunnies. In the grocery, grave [...]

The Window Is Opening

By |November 4th, 2015|

About five years out from my transplants (a kidney and a pancreas, received in 2000, auspicious year), I made a routine visit to my nephrologist at Duke University Hospital. The man is calm as deep water. Tall. With those beautiful hands some physicians have. And he reads my books. We did the routine things. Everything [...]