Eat, Darling, Eat 

When I was a kid, my grandmother, Ethel, lived with us during the summer months. She moved to Miami Beach from New Jersey when she was in her 70s but stayed with us from Passover (in the spring) until the Jewish high holidays (autumn), both to avoid the heat and to spend time with her family. My mom, Sandi, was the youngest of her three daughters,...

Starting when she was born and flourishing ever since, I strove to develop a bond with my daughter that could not be easily broken. The bond was there when Destiny brought home pictures she made in school, and I responded with affirmations; when she learned to ride her bike and needed a Band-Aid on her knee; when she was a Girl Scout selling cookie...

I’ve gone through many different body shapes in my life. Even when I was as thin as I felt society pressured me to be, I wasn’t the perfect shape my mother wanted me to be. But her idea of that “perfect” shape would change, both for her and for me. Her words mirrored her mood or perceptions at any given time.

When I was 16, she took me to a doctor b...

New Year’s Eve, 1983. A warm ranch house in suburban Buffalo. Outside, the usual ice and snow of a Western New York winter. Frankie turns to me and says, “Ready?”

This is my first time as a bringing-you-home-to-meet-my-parents girlfriend. Previous beaus were more drive-by in nature when it came to the mom and dad thing. A child of the ‘70s, I was a...

In middle and high school, I used to fall ill, and this is not a metaphor. My body collapsed, as if a puppeteer had suddenly abandoned the strings. I spent months lolling in my parents’ bed, watching movies and sleeping. My room didn’t have a TV or my favorite music box, the one with the ballerinas, stiff-skirted and precise. When I needed to go to...