Category Archives: miss playa

“My daughter’s taken all my money, all my stuff, all gone, and she’s up in the hills… I saw her on the TV, up in the hills, and she’s taken all my money and she’s with that guy. A scary type. She left me with nothing. I know she’s up there. I saw her on the TV.  “

Year Two 1. The poor girl was so confused she thought she was moving into a New York apartment or a facsimile of one.  She thought she was leaving the two-bedroom flat in Atwater that she had sparsely but low key decorated for a doorman building with a lobby and lively people who got fullyContinue reading “Assisted Living”

Year Ten   Hi Deirdre So I am sorry to say that there have been at least 20 incident reports on your mom since she moved in.   She continues to get up on her own and keeps falling. Also, now she is getting aggressive.  I’m so sorry that this is what happens in so manyContinue reading “After the Fall”

Year one. The weather was its usual cool perfection in L.A. That’s the way I remember it and I’m probably not wrong. A beautiful day for getting lost. To be clear, she wasn’t roaming. Roaming is sluggish, and an excellent form of leisure. While roaming,  you hope to make discoveries. I know because I likeContinue reading “a beautiful day for getting lost”

it’s that last song on the album and you don’t get to it in time, so the needle soars off the grooves on to the part where there is no more music to be played. And then you  think, I’ll just start the record again, or I’ll just play that last song again, but thenContinue reading “How to Live Without A Mother Part I”

When I photograph her old photographs, something happens that’s hard to explain in the way that a suite of emotion is hard to express.  I  obsess over chronology– how old was she in that one? where was she living? did she know my father yet? who was behind the camera?  No reveal is forthcoming; IContinue reading “i am her story”

The Christmas tree lots were presided over by eager ruddy-faced guys, the cold turning their breath white, the orange lights on their menthol cigarettes poking from their gloved hands.  My dad made deals, slipping crisp twenties from his billfold to a palm. We were lucky and privileged and safe. Something I took for granted, asContinue reading “Storms in the Living Room”

a walk i’d known for thirty years

New shoes on the table bring a policeman to the door. (Scottish superstition) Don’t you want to put a little lipstick on? For job interviews, college interviews, things that count: just be yourself. Men stopped me on the street, or on the subway, to ask for my number. I dated Steve McQueen when I wasContinue reading “20 Things My Mother Told Me”

Days of the week, if it’s night or day, reasons to get out of bed, reasons to go to bed, how to butter toast, the names of my children, my name, your name, your ex-husband’s name, the caregivers’ names, why to say hello to someone you’ve known for fifty years, when to laugh at aContinue reading “Things That Need Repeating”