Georgiana Goddard King loved to chat. She begins Volume III of The Way of Saint James by retelling a conversation she had with an unidentified …
The Company She Kept: Georgiana Goddard King’s Men Friends
Georgiana Goddard King ran with a pretty fast crowd. Never content simply to admire a work of art without examining thoroughly its artistic, literary…
The Company She Kept – The Women Friends of Georgiana Goddard King
All the Ways They Lied, Aida Zilelian, Keylight Books (January 9, 2024)
Imagine being a member of a quartet that could never play in tune. In Aida Zilelian’s insightful novel set in Queens, New York, we come to know a volatile, tradition-bound, and controlling mother and her three adult daughters, each of them trying to establish their individual needs while trying to find a place at the family table together. That will give you an idea of what it is like in the Manoukian family. There are only fleeting glimpses of these four ever playing in tune.
The novel describes a real family so beautifully that you can easily feel like a member of the family. Even though each episode seems superficially to be about nothing at all, these stories will hold most everything in them. Families like the Manoukians are quickly identified as “dysfunctional,” but their worries, their miscommunications, and the ever-fraying relationships are all too recognizable, all too common. And all too familiar.
In each instance, the daughters will confront some roadblock in their lives and blame the husband, or fate, or the mother, Takouhi. Whatever the reasons, each of them comes to the table with emotional baggage they are both eager and ready to unload and yet not at all ready to unload. Add to the mix a thoughtful but absent father to the two older girls, and a thoughtful but ailing father to the youngest of the three, and it would be hard to imagine a dinner table without conflict on some level.
These are kitchen stories. They are living room stories. The daughters call up memories of their childhood while setting the table, going over a recipe, or cleaning the floors. This is their routine attempt at peaceful domesticity ever at odds with the torment felt by each of them.
Kohar, the eldest, remembers incidents growing up where her mother controlled who she could have as friends, and later opposed her moving out of the house, but to what end? Kohar believes that if she were to confront Takouhi about any of it now, her mother likely would disavow each incident either as if it had not happened or that it must be misremembered. Kohar wonders, “If you can’t even remember what you did, what was the point of it all?” And there is no clear answer.
All the Ways They Lied is exquisitely written, using thoughtful descriptive language that comes across as fresh and innovative, and clear. As the three girls examine their relationships, both with their mother and with each other, it might prompt you, the reader, to rethink your own family conflicts. Very highly recommended.
Thank you to the 180 poets from 32 U.S. states and 15 countries who participated in our ONE GOOD MEMORY Series, which ran. from August 29, 2022 to …
Thank you to the 180 poets who participated in our ONE GOOD MEMORY SERIES (8/29/22-2/24/23)
It’s such a treat to have my work published in this wonderful magazine.
A Phone Call by Anne Born I remember the hushed phone call. My study-abroad daughter calling me in New York From Gallery 12 at the Prado Museum in …
A Phone Call by Anne Born (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)
June 12, 2022 – Niles, MI
Lately, I’ve been noticing people with canes. I understand how useful they can be if you have injured your foot, your leg, for instance. Use a cane while it heals.
But the canes I have been watching are being used by older people. Typically, they are not pretty or decorated. They look worn and they bow sometimes from supporting the weight of their owner. At every other step, there is something to hang onto, to lean on, to use to keep your balance.
I wonder what the first day is like with a cane.
At my bus stop, there is a wonderful woman who waits for buses with me nearly every morning. We’re both older than most of our compatriots on the bus and like many older people, we worry about tomorrow a lot more than we let on. She and I grouse about the bus drivers and we keep tabs on other regular riders.
Something she said to me once has bothered me since it first came up months ago. We were talking about walking home from the office in a power outage. We agreed it would be an effort to cover this distance on foot and she told me suddenly, “You know, I’d hate to have to start using a cane. I want to hold out to the last minute.”
We both walk now unaided and many days, I will go out of my way to find nice walks because walking clears my head. In fact, I know that I could walk the entire route to my office more often if I had the organizational skills necessary to get out of the house a half hour to forty-five minutes earlier. She, on the other hand, might not be as comfortable, even though she clearly does not need a cane. Today.
But how do you know it’s time?
Is there something that cries out to you that today is the day you surrender to old age and start using a cane? Does a doctor tell you to use one? Or is this something that creeps up where you just don’t remember later how it started, how you found yourself in the store, picking out a cane?
I can’t imagine they would be any harder to get used to than my new hiking poles. I took them out for a spin and had the rhythm down pat in just a few steps. If the height is right and the feel of the handle doesn’t irritate your hand, how difficult would it be to use a cane? It’d be pretty simple, right? Step, cane-step; step, cane-step; step, cane-step. And off you go.
But then, there’s no going back, is there?
Now you are officially a senior citizen, an older American, a what, disabled person? With that one stroke, you would go from being able to disabled, and unlike the ones who use canes
when they have sustained an injury, you will know, deep down, there’s no going back to normal. You don’t get to improve or get better. This is the moment you would have to realize you can only get less better. Today, cane; tomorrow, walker? Then, wheelchair? And those beautiful shiny black hiking poles that were so exciting the first time out, will be left in the closet for someone else to use. Someone younger.
I am not ready to give up hiking just yet. I want to walk unaided and I relish every single chance I get to do so. Of course, I worry this walk today or maybe one tomorrow could be the one where I realize I just can’t do it anymore. It’s too hard or I worry too much that I could fall.
But, I hope it’s not this walk. It’s almost sunset now and the breeze is amazing. I feel it on my face and when I step out, it nudges me forward. I stretch up to my full height at each street corner and I step carefully across all those cracks in the sidewalk. I catch a glimpse of kids on the swings, the men playing dominos at the card tables alongside the vegetable market, and the young girls comparing notes on that boy across the street.
I don’t want to miss any of this – this wonderful and exuberant life of the city – and it’s fabulous that nobody even notices me as I walk by.
As I walk by.
God, I love those words.
I have become a hermit.
I loved the lockdown, the shelter in place.
I found that masking pleased me,
And avoiding crowded places
Came natural to me.
I’m not much of a baker, so
I started by organizing things.
Like-objects in one place.
All the colorful paper clips,
Empty notebooks, pens
All going the same way in the plastic box,
All my pencils,
Freshly sharpened, of course.
I wanted to be useful, so I learned to crochet,
But it didn’t suit me.
Maybe it was being useful
That didn’t suit me.
I ordered in because
I was comfortable with it, after living in New York.
Every Thursday, a new basket of food.
I even tried senior shopping
But the sight of all those frightened old people
Wasn’t sustainable.
I didn’t go back.
Then I started tidying seriously,
Lingering over the things that used to spark joy
Before throwing them away.
It’s only now I can speak about it.
I’ve become a hermit.
Tidying is a way of life,
A manner of being.
I’ve told everyone
I need to control my environment,
So I stick to my new routine of tidying
And it takes the place of accomplishing.
The dishes are all clean, the yard is all clean,
The garage is all clean,
The basement is all clean.
I’ve cleaned the closets again and again.
I make the bed.
I throw out more paper,
Give more things away.
All of my yarn is sorted by color now,
Like my paper clips.
All the hangers face the same way in the closet,
All the coffee cup handles in the cupboard.
If I sort out the small things,
Maybe the big things will not matter as much.
I’ve found that there are not a lot of big things
To a hermit.
I am delighted to have an essay included in this exciting new book! To view the Kickstarter page, please click here.
Death’s Garden Revisited Relationships with Cemeteries is an anthology of personal essays about how the authors connect with cemeteries and graveyards.
Contributors are…
Editor Loren Rhoads is the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. She’s blogged about cemeteries as travel destinations since 2011 at CemeteryTravel.com. She’s also written about cemeteries for Legacy.com, the Daily Beast, Gothic.Net, Gothic Beauty, Mental Floss, the Cemetery Club, the Horror Writers Association, and so much more. She’s been a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies for more than 20 years.
Cemetery writers/Genealogists/Historians: Anne Born, Barbara Baird, Carrie Sessarego, Carole Tyrrell, Erika Mailman, J’aime Rubio, Jo Nell Huff, Joanne M. Austin, Rachelle Meilleur, Sharon Pajka, Trilby Plants
Horror authors: A. M. Muffaz, Angela Yuriko Smith, Christine Sutton, Denise N. Tapscott, E. M. Markoff, Emerian Rich, Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito, Francesca Maria, Greg Roensch, Mary Rajotte, Melodie Bolt, Priscilla Bettis, Rena Mason, Robert Holt, R. L. Merrill, Saraliza Anzaldua, Stephen Mark Rainey, and Trish Wilson.