For three years now I’ve been wearing a ring on the fourth finger of my right hand. It’s rose gold with diamonds encircling a large oval aquamarine. At the time, I chose the water-like stone simply because it’s my birthstone and I loved the pale blue colour.
My partner asked me the other night if I love his son. The question stung, both because he felt he needed to ask, and also because I understood why he did.
Of all the types of pregnancy loss, Termination For Medical Reasons (TFMR) is one of the least talked about, understood or supported types of loss and the only one to come with the unique and specific mix of horror, judgment and silence.
I can’t tell you how many times a stranger has asked me if I’ve been punched in the eye. It’s an inappropriate question to ask someone you don’t know, as if I did have a black eye, I can’t imagine wanting to talk about it with a stranger. But what bothers me more than the…
“I need sex” are not the words I would expect to hear from my 56-year old facialist after she utters my name. “How are you?” is more inline with what I had anticipated her saying but, in that moment, I really wished she’d just said, “Can we reschedule?” The fact that I am lying half-naked…
Dining alone in Italy can sometimes be viewed in the same way as drinking a cappuccino after 11:30 a.m.; some strange and horrifying tourist affliction. I’m not talking about grabbing a quick bite at a café, but sitting down to a leisurely meal. What started out as a necessity — when I first moved to…
Usually I would prefer to get any sort of medical attention in a country whose health system I have experience with. I would have waited until I returned to the United States, but as I was in Italy for eight months and started a series of vaccine shots just as I left Los Angeles, two…
While some say a knowledge of Italian or possession of a visa are essential in order to live in Italy, I believe the most indispensable requirement is pazienza. A foreigner can not live in Italy without a reservoir of patience. Even Italians get frustrated with the way things are run (or, more accurately, not run).…
Excluding grandchildren, nothing would make my mum happier than if I stopped wearing an underwire bra. She first made me aware of this desire when she gave me a book entitled, Dressed to Kill. It was about the link between breast cancer and bras and had my mum convinced, that by me wearing an underwire bra,…
It wasn’t until I saw a limo get stuck at the entrance to a strip mall that I really felt I was back in Los Angeles. Its midsection was too long and low for the concrete camel-hump of the driveway, so there it lay like a beached white whale. When I noticed the driver was…