readers’ notes
doused Annie’s home, and although I didn’t see the fire, I never did see Annie again. Kids didn’t stay in the trailer park long; they were always moving to another state, like Minnesota, to live with their grandma or dad. Sometimes they’d come back, say it didn’t work out. My home stayed the same—two parents and two little girls, dinners around the table, long summer evenings on the swing set while Mom and Dad watched from deck chairs. At night, alone in bed, I’d think about fire, how it could snatch my happy world with one lick, and I’d pray feverish prayers until the panic burned away and I fell asleep. MICHELLE STIFFLER, MESA, AZ
There’s a cardboard box in my basement containing some old photographs. This morning, I went down to check a mousetrap and after, with a similar uneasiness, I opened the box. In one photo, I smile broadly as the man I was married to for over twenty years holds our daughter. They smile, too; she bites her lower lip. There’s a part of me that wants to throw out the photo, but how do you forge fully ahead when a residual heaviness pulls you back, even if it’s to a life you no longer want? I’m in my mid-fifties, of a generation of women who started to believe we could be anything we wanted. But messages
were mixed. Speak up but not too often. Be confident but not too sure of yourself. I don’t remember ever being taught it was okay to have my own needs. My mother grew up in poverty, the child of immigrants. She lived in a tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City, and her own mother died at a young age. “Quit your bellyaching,” she often told me. “Make it work.” So that’s what I did. Until I didn’t want to anymore. I’m still not sure what to do with that old photograph of my ex-husband and me. My grown daughters have their own family photos and memories. My marriage helped shape me into the person I am today, so maybe that’s why I hold on to it. Or maybe I know even if I throw out the photo, the shadow of that other life will follow me anyway. LIZ PALEY, CONCORD, MA
By our senior year in high school, my friend Adele and I had pretty much had it with the rank cafeteria food. We were looking for something a little more outof-the-ordinary. There was a Chinese restaurant, the Ni Hao, located in a strip mall beyond the school parking lot and a busy street. Although ours was a closed campus, Adele and I decided that a decent meal was worth the risk, and went there for lunch at least one a week.
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