March 22, 1978

by Slouching Mom at Slouching Past 40
Posted on October 8, 2007

We'd spent the morning at El Morro, the citadel in Old San Juan. My brother and I chased one another by the ramparts and into the damp and dark tunnels. The wind whipped our shirts into billowy sails. It's a magical place, El Morro. My brother had a new camera, and he took some shots of the fort, and then of me against the sea, my hand brushing back the hair that kept blowing about my face. When after our trip he developed them himself during photography class at school and took them home to my mother, she gasped but wouldn't say why. She framed one of them. One day much later she told me that they showed me exactly as I was, on the cusp of adolescence, one foot in planted in childhood, the other stretched out toward a darker and more troubling time.

As my brother and I waged pretend battles on El Morro that day, Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas, one of a family of high-wire artists, prepared to walk on a wire between the towers of the Condado Plaza, not far from where we stood gazing first at the roiling sea and then at the sweeping view the citadel afforded of the city. Today I wonder if Wallenda felt that this was his last hurrah, because he was 73, or whether the risk-taker in him was ageless. Read more...

Are You Still in Love?

By Bub and Pie
Posted on August 13, 2007

Because I’m not.

I ask this question every time I see a certain friend of mine who got married two years ago. She always happily affirms that she is, indeed, still in love, and I roll my eyes. At our most recent coffee-date, however, we got down to brass tacks. What exactly do we mean when we say that we are – or are not – in love?

When I am in love, I experience the following symptoms:

• Loss of appetite. I can eat if I have to, but I never want to. This symptom lasts anywhere from three to six months, and is my favourite weight-loss plan. (The Divorce Diet is equally effective, but not nearly as fun.)
  
  
• Inability to be away from the loved one. Circumstances usually dictate that separations must occur, but these feel unnatural and wrong, as if I’m walking around with a bloody stump where my arm used to be, and bystanders are getting dripped on.
  
  
• Waves of euphoria when I am with the loved one. Better than chocolate. (This symptom applies only to requited love.)
  
  
• Instant, effortless memorization of every word that passes the loved one’s lips. (This symptom is especially true for unrequited love.)
  

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Plain Truths and Phallacy

by Kate at Sweet/Salty
Posted on June 29, 2007

I am not good enough for him, and I don't say this fishing to be convinced otherwise. It's the plain truth.

He is a living Old Spice commercial, all impeccable goodness. He kills bugs on-demand and airplanes our son until his legs ache and smells like woodsmoke and knows how to whistle grass and stays out until he collapses building rock walls, restoring clapboard, painting, pruning the roses, refinishing the tiller of a neighbour’s sailboat. Read more...