Nadine Gordimer's "Once Upon a Time" begins with the telling of two stories. The first is about the author, who awakes in the middle of the night, afraid of a possible intruder. Then, to distract her mind, she creates a second story. The story is a fairytale of an affluent family liv...

As I walked down my old street, I felt an unprecedented anxiousness. Would they let me in or would they turn me away only to the cold lonely street. I remember this day from when I was forty years younger, a time when I was happy, when I had loved my family, and I was not alone. This was my l...

Left Behind "Our existence is but a breif crack of light between two eternities of darkness" --Vladimir Nabokov, 1947. Three years ago, my family and I moved to Erie, Michigan. Our old one story home was scooted up to a ranch style house built in the late 1960's. Kay Luis li...

UNFORGETTABLE DAY Even though I am living in the United States now, I still keep in my mind a very frightening incident that happened to my family in Viet Nam when I was a little boy twenty years ago. Before this event happened, I had had a very wonderful childhood. I lived happily with...

A day I'll never forget At the young age of 51, my best friend Mary A. Tolbert, my grandmother was taken away from me by a sudden "massive heart attack." Living in Sacramento I had just left my grandmother's house. Earlier that Monday evening in September my grandmother ha...

Broken "What made my life different from the parable is that both of my parents did have claims. And in order to remain whole, I needed both of them, but that seemed not to be an option. Something inside me was not just depressed but dividing, cracking, splintering, pulling me back and fo...