Author’s Note: I live just outside of Baltimore, in a historically blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by water and wildlife. Sometimes it feels like living in a novel Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Kurt Vonnegut could have written together: filled with the magic and tragicomedy of the universe. As people and animals were dying around me, I wrote this narrative meditation on the disheartening matter-of-factness of transience and finding comfort in tiny acts of kindness and each new day... [Continue Story]
Spy Reprints “Alone in the Mist with Tchaikovsky” by Barbara Haas
Author’s Note: “Dostoevsky, Rubenstein, Mussorgsky—Russia’s titans of literature, music & art—have lain in repose in an antique cemetery in Saint Petersburg since the 19th century. Visitors stroll through, ooh-ing & ahh-ing over the elaborate statuary, and they snap a few pix, but nobody cries. It takes a person with fresh grief to shed tears there... [Continue Story]
Spy Reprints “Second Sight” by Michele Rappoport
Author’s Note: “After a retinal tear took me dangerously close to blindness in my right eye, I was instructed to see an ophthalmologist twice a year to ensure the surgical repair that saved my sight ... [Continue Story]
Spy Reprints “WOW” by Doris Ferleger
Author’s Note: “When my beloved husband was dying at age 59, I felt compelled to write…in the middle of the night…about living in the bardo of dying. (“As the Moon Has Breath,” published by Main Street Rag.) As years go by, new memories about our life together keep emerging. “Wow” was written as I pondered how calm we both were upon hearing his grave diagnosis. That calmness, looking back, was a tribute to the depth of our connection, and our shared spiritual practice that included facing, with fear, courage, tenderness and awe, the fragileness and impermanence of life. (Steven’s father died suddenly at age 57 two weeks before our son’s birth.) I write with immense gratitude to my dearest Steven, who announced at his 50th birthday party, it was his decade to practice dying and then began dancing like a phlonic bird with widespread wings.”
WOW
"NOTHING MUCH SURPRISES ME ANYMORE, except for the day my fanatically fit, nutritionally balanced husband was diagnosed with a Stage 4 brain tumor, but even then…"[Continue Story]
Spy Reprints “Warrior’s Helmet Crab” by Caroline N. Simpson
Author’s Note: “New to Delaware, I took my 18-month-old on day trips to the sleepy beaches along Delaware Bay, where we first encountered horseshoe crabs. My life then was dominated by firsts: first ... [Continue Story]
Spy Reprints “Meditative Ducks” by Tara Gilson Fraga
Author’s Note: For the last few years I have had the honor of working with children in special education. It has been a humbling and educational experience. Every time I think I understand, I realize how little I know. Christopher, the protagonist of this nonfiction story who has now graduated high school, is one such student who taught me much more than I expected...[Continue Story]