I still remember my 7th grade crush’s phone number by heart (in fact, I suspect it might still be accurate—the notion that he’s still living in his parents’ house in suburban Georgia really isn’t too far-fetched). I made it my habit to scribble in my spiral-bound journal exactly what he was wearing (red Converse, Jim Morrison t-shirt, baggy jeans <3 <3 <3) after I inevitably “ran into him” at the town square each Friday night. I followed him around at football games, drew stick figure pictures of us kissing during Earth Science, and felt my first real pang of heartache when he made out with my cousin one (devastating) night.

Whenever Edward tossed me so much as a sideways glance or a nod of recognition, I felt as if he’d bestowed upon me the most lavish gift—his attention!—and I responded as any legitimately lovestruck pre-teen would: I dug deeper into the trenches of my obsession. I sat on my parents’ fence after school and watched the cars go by, sure that eventually one of them would contain Edward—the dreamiest heartthrob any precocious-Courtney-Love-wannabe-12-year-old could imagine. I bought his favorite CDs and listened to them on repeat. I convinced the neighbor kid, who was on Edward’s brother’s soccer team, to provide me with any details he knew about their family, cause when you are a freakishly obsessed 7th grader, the minutia are clearly most important—What kind of cereal do they eat? What’s their dog’s name? (General Lee, by the way, was their dog’s name. Which should have been my first red flag).

Like that of any tragic romance, my love for Edward was unrequited. During that liminal year of junior high, I developed some seriously destructive habits that would take well over a decade to break: amateur stalking (thank heavens Facebook didn’t exist in 1993), waiting weeks, months, even years for the object of my affection to decide he loved me back, making excuses for the poor (read: dismissive) behavior of my beloved. How was it that I didn’t know about female empowerment? What on earth happened to my dignity?

Perhaps most importantly: Why did it take so many years to eradicate these behaviors I perfected so well during my Year of Loving Edward?

Edward I want my pre-adolescent dignity back.

You probably stood there with your beady, conniving eyes locked on me for minutes beforehand, your undermedicated little fingers twitching opportunistically with Darwinian notions of power.

It was second or third grade, I don’t recall. In the hierarchy of my memory, emotional content far outweighs temporal content, and this was pretty fucking emotional. I still remember how I seethed for hours after the fact, shocked and hurt by my encounter with a ruthless side of human nature to which I had heretofore been oblivious.

Life was pretty simple back then. The usual elementary school digs—riding my yellow bike up steep Donald Drive in the morning, drilling times tables and basic grammar, snack recess, reading books far below my level of comprehension, getting out of class for leadership, attempting jumps off the bumps in the sidewalk as I zoomed down Donald back to the apartment complex. You know. Smart kid things. Oh yeah, I almost forgot—I also frequented the GATE program after school on Thursdays. Gifted And Talented Education. Funny, I never saw you there.

Anyway. Picture little ol’ me. Bright sunny day, standing in line behind the backstop, just waiting to pummel this worn red rubber ball. Gazing absentmindedly at the puny little pitcher, different ideas for specific pitch requests sparring in my head. (Slow baby bouncy? Nah, that’s ordinary. Slow roll? Nope, that’s for kids with no coordination. Slow big bouncy? Hey, I could kill that. Slow big bouncy.)

I could already imagine the body language of the outfielders when they’d see the ball, arcing above their heads, silhouetted against the blue sky like a distant black balloon. They’d turn and charge after it, sprinting, until they realized the true magnitude of my kick. Then they would slowly come to a halt. Giving up. Knowing that Julien had done it once again. What else could they have expected?

Suddenly, I felt a hand rip my shoulder backward, throwing me off balance. You stepped in front of me, simply and unforgivingly, as if I were supposed to just concede my spot in line, compromise my enthusiasm, and that would be that. Like, “Oh, it’s Trevor, crazy transfer kid, I’ll let him express himself however he feels whenever he feels like it no matter if it hurts my feelings.” Well, no. It wasn’t like that.

“Hey, no cutting,” I stated defiantly.

“Too bad.” (God, what an asshole.)

And then it happened. So quickly, so out of the blue. I was striding to reclaim my position in front of your devilish grin when you whipped around and fiercely clawed my neck, in one precise movement. Blood was drawn with ease.

I stumbled backward, feeling my wound, aghast with horror. First patting my neck with my forefinger, then licking off the salty substance. Yep, fuckin’ blood. My outrage was drowned by my incredulity. What kind of beast was this kid? All I knew is that I was getting the hell away, turning my tear-streaked face away from the madness, crossing once again the border between the wild grass and the familiar, burning blacktop.

***
On that sad, sad day, I couldn’t find the courage to go back out there and fight the injustice. I knew the risks were too great. And somewhere, in the stores of my subconscious, I know a part of me is dying each day whilst reliving this horrid event.

Trevor. You’re one of my best friends and all. And yeah, we “laugh it off” when we talk about it nowadays. But that’s not to say I don’t cringe inside and my heart doesn’t start racing wildly whenever I hear your voice behind my back.

It still matters.

Trevor, I want my place in the kickball line back.

Even though I was only a junior it was going to be my second time going to prom. I was 17 at the time. I had been friends with Kristen for a year or so by the time January came around and my friends began asking girls to our prom.

I wasn’t so keen on the idea of prom ever since I was asked by a girl named Amelia the year before. I thought of Amelia as a friend, but it was obvious that she had much stronger feelings for me than I had for her. By the time prom came around for Amelia and myself, she was refusing to talk to me because I had no intention of dating her. Needless to say prom was a disaster, and three years later Amelia has yet to talk to me again.

With my bad memory of prom still very fresh in my mind, I contemplated not going my junior year, until Kristen began texting me. I had always thought she was very pretty and even had attempted to date her a few times but it always seemed like another guy would beat me to her. As she continued to text me throughout January, she eventually brought up who I was going to ask to prom. I told her that I wasn’t sure if I would go because of last year. She said she understood and didn’t bring it up again until a few weeks later. I started to pick up on some signs and decided that if I could go to prom with Kristen, things might turn out to be fun. I was secretive talking to her about prom, saying I was thinking of asking a girl to prom and needed her advice, eventually having her tell me what her favorite kind of flowers were. Daisies. For the first time in my life I had successfully done the right thing at the right time. I gave her the daisies before a play practice one day and asked her to prom. She was overjoyed and said she was hoping I would ask her.

Over the next few months we grew closer. She said she didn’t want to rush into anything after what happened with her last boyfriend but she always talked about stuff we could do together over the summer. I thought that after prom she would probably be interested in dating me. I could not have been more wrong. About a month before prom, I had my tux paid for, dinner reservations made with our group, I had even asked my youth pastor if I could borrow his new Charger to pick her up in. It was also at this time that she told me she wasn’t interested in dating anyone during high school. She never said if something happened or if I had said something to her, only that after prom we should just go back to being friends and nothing more. I was a little out of it, after liking her for so long knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to date her after prom, but she was still a very good friend of mine and I knew that was more important in the long run.

The day of prom it snowed in Minnesota. That should have been a sign to me that today would not turn out well. I picked her up and she seemed very quiet. I thought that she was just feeling awkward about the situation and that she would become more comfortable as the day went on. She didn’t want to stand by me while we waited for grand march. Things were going bad.

By the time we were at dinner she was still refusing to talk to me or even sit by me. The second we got to the dance, she ran to the opposite corner of the room and I didn’t see her the rest of the night. Friends would come up asking me where Kristen was and all I was able to say was that she was around. The dance ended and I was in the same spot as last year: dateless, alone, and with everyone else around me having a good night. I waited around until almost everyone had left the dance to see where Kristen was so I could bring her home and hope to say something to make this a better night, but she wasn’t there. I eventually got a text from her saying she left with a friend who was going to drop her off.

For the second year in a row, I was left alone at a dance hall wondering what I did to make a girl so angry at me. I tried to apologize to Kristen over the next few weeks but she continued to avoid me, I asked her friends but none of them could tell me what made her so angry with me. I guess that’s what makes this such a difficult situation for me, not knowing what I did wrong and not being able to fix it. Kristen and I have made some small talk since but it continues to be very awkward and I try to avoid it if I can. I didn’t end up going to prom my senior year. After screwing up for two years and not knowing why, I just figured I would save myself the trouble of a third time.

Kristen, I want my Prom back.

There was a time in our lives when we did not admit this to many people, but we eventually grew to embrace our two hours a week of hot chocolate, prediction-making, and mild boredom.

Why did we watch it? This is a question we sometimes asked one another. The show isn’t innovative; it isn’t even especially entertaining.

Another helicopter ride? Wow, we didn’t see that one coming.
A heart-to-heart with Chris Harrison? Yes, Chris. We’re bored, too.
Shopping for two engagement rings because you have no idea which woman you want to marry? We see it season after season, but it’s still pretty weird.

So why do we watch this very uncomfortable and occasionally nauseating show?

Because we like nice people and we like love, and we really, really like it when nice people fall in love with each other.

So we liked Tenley and we liked Gia. They were pretty and friendly and harmless which is what we have come to expect from the show. We liked Ali, too, most of the time, when she wasn’t reminding us of the bossy girl we were scared of in high school. (When she apologized for saying those mean things, we forgave her, and we’re super excited that she’s next season’s Bachelorette.)

We rooted for Tenley because she was honest and sweet and she knew what she wanted and she had been hurt by that awful ex-husband; we rooted for Gia because she was sexy and kitten-like and insecure which came off as incredibly charming—plus, we were afraid that if Jake didn’t choose her, she might go back and make more bad dating choices (Gia, you deserve better!); and we rooted for Ali because she seemed like someone we could know, like she could be a friend of a friend who we sometimes saw at parties. We were so happy! We said, “Any of those three could win and we would be content, so let’s root for all of them!”

Then, of course, came the spoilers. We read them. We didn’t believe it. Vienna? No way. We watched with building horror every week, and now no longer were we rooting for our favorite three; instead, we were shouting at the screen, saying things like, “Jake, how could you!”

“But Gia’s so sweet!”

“But Tenley is perfect for you!”

“But you and Ali were falling in love!”

We watched the season wind down the way we were told (but didn’t want to believe) that it would, and the closer we got to the finale, the more we lost that good feeling about how nice finding love is and instead found ourselves filled with dread.

And then it ended, and we were bummed.

Jake, you told us during “After the Final Rose” that you and Vienna were happy and in love and that we would just have to deal with that. So, okay. We’re dealing. But the thing is that we didn’t really watch The Bachelor because we wanted you to be happy. We watched it because we wanted us to be happy.

So while we wish you and Vienna the best—Jake, we would like the 17 hours we spent watching you back.

I bought my mother a Crosely portable record player for her birthday one year. I was maybe 20. It came in a light brown leather case. I had planned it for months. I had a plan in mind too, another one of my grand schemes at reconciling the disparate histories and memories wandering my mind.

There is a photo of us when she was 25 and I was two, and my grandfather is sitting in the green leather chair in the living room, my mother is on the couch, and I’m on a little two-step wooden stool. We are drinking Cokes out of green-glass bottles with straws. Even though my grandfather was long dead when I bought the Crosely, I had imagined we would once again sit around listening to the Sun Records boxed set. Maybe some Mingus. Definitely Patti Smith and Elvis Costello.

The Crosely was broken, she said, when she opened it. She returned it. She did not like it in the first place.

A few years later, my mother sold off hundreds of records in a yard sale. She placed an ad in the classifieds, and I wrote one for Craigslist. Album crates that once lined one side of her bedroom, stacked 2-3 high, now spread out on uneven asphalt, next to a vintage sewing machine and some garden tools.

I would try to look through the albums when I was in my preteens. She would tell me to get out of her room. But one thing I knew: she worked in a record store in the late seventies and early eighties, before her second nervous breakdown when I was five. And record store employees—like the infamous Rob Gordon and friends—never lose the critic part of their souls.

“Nirvana?” my mother would snort after hearing me play Nevermind until I wore out the cassette tape. “Black Sabbath did it first.”

These comments always confused me until I found whatever artist or album she said was better, and she was usually right.

But back to the yardsale: that day, people picked over the wooden crates; they interrogated her, and me, about quality, editions, possible artists in the clutter. She shrugged her shoulders. She no longer knew and did not care enough. I’m pretty sure one lady walked away with the complete boxed set of Sun Records for under $10. All of the collectors were collectors. They were nitpicky, cheap, looking for something to give them status, to add to their lists. They had never been to the shows, nor did they know all the lyrics; they probably didn’t even know who Patti Smith is. They knew what a round piece of grooved vinyl was worth.

My then-boyfriend was the one person who got why I was upset. An aspiring DJ, he bought a big crate of them for $60 and was gleeful and grateful for the vinyl.

Then-boyfriend and I broke up eight months later. He loved the music, and he was a pretty good DJ, but I was still angry at my mother and I could only take it out on him. His roommate let me in to pick up my stuff, and turned a blind eye when I walked out with more. I stole back all the Clash I could find, a Marianne Faithful British-release single, David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, and a few others after we broke up. I never did get back Tom Tom Club’s eponymous album.

Later my mother would tell me she should have charged him more. I said nothing. I used to think—hope—that we might connect on some level on how we experienced the key change that made something skip in our ribcages, how we experienced the joy of scratched personalities and sounds on a record player. A few times I would mention a show I had seen, or wanted to see. The responses were always the same.

Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your money. All I have from those days are records I don’t even play anymore and crap I don’t want to remember.

I wonder if the woman I imagined, pieced together from nebulous fragments of memories, ever truly existed. I do not know what happened, but I knew she once loved music. I knew that a long time ago, in a parallel universe we would still listen to vinyl, new and old, on whatever record player we could scrounge up. Instead, this person is a fairy tale that comforts me in thinking that once upon a time, my mother was happy.

Just as I had hoped, soon we were “fuck buddies,” “friends with benefits,” “lovers,” or whatever else you want to call it. If it was a school night and we hadn’t had time to get the gym and needed to release a little stress and alotta hormones, we were only a few doors down from one another.

Everything seemed to be going on track until the night of the pink sock. Daniel was pretty worked up and asked me where he should, you know, release his load. I looked at him blankly and wrinkled my forehead. What type of a question was that?

“Do you have a sock?” he asked.

“A SOCK!?” I said.

I was mortified. I love some good ol’ fashioned dirty talkin’, but “Do you have a sock?” was about the least sexy thing he could have said.

Finally I said, “Fine, but I will only give you a pink one.”

And so I handed him a pink sock that my roommate had given me and he jacked off into it.

Daniel, at first I wanted my pink sock back, but on second thought, you keep it – forever.

One thing college did do for me was convince me I wasn’t going to end up a rock star or a famous poet and nobody was really running communes in the city anymore. I guess I could submit something about my band breakup, which was definitely harsh, but this story is only coincidentally related to that particular learning scar.

I eventually had to get a job doing something, and I decided to become a teacher, because that and the Great American Novelist was all I was trained to be. Funny thing was, when I got into the classroom, I loved it. I taught high school English and Social Studies in a school that had a mix of students from all economic and ethnic backgrounds. I put my heart and soul into the effort, and became friends with many of the students. They thought I was the cool teacher, and I wanted them all to get A’s. I tried to be the teacher that would reach and inspire every single one of them. The times that I did were better than any drug you could name; the feeling you get knowing that you reached someone and changed their life for the better is the most life-affirming feeling I can imagine. Although I gave up teaching years ago because it came down to getting a better paying job or not make my rent, I still feel the warm echo of the joy I felt when one of my students told me I was the reason they started to believe they could make something of themself and wanted to go to school and learn to be a doctor. It sounds corny, but I know that I have done something positive no matter what else I achieve in life.

During what turned out to be my last year teaching high school, I taught a particularly great group of students. As I usually did, I would divulge personal details about my life when I thought it would make a point or would help in some way. I mentioned that I had been in a band during college. One girl, whose name I think was Carla (give me a break, it has been many years) kept asking about the band and I mentioned I thought I had a copy of a four song demo tape we had recorded laying around somewhere. It was a cassette tape, and since I wasn’t going to be seeing anyone in that band again, it was the only copy I had of anything we had recorded.

So because you probably can figure out what came next, first you must ask why I didn’t dub a copy of it before lending it out to an irresponsible teenage girl? Or why didn’t I just play it for her in class or at lunch and then take it home?

Well, I didn’t. Maybe I thought that my classes were so significant to her that she would somehow treat the tape as a holy relic of her favorite teacher, or I am not sure what else. Either way, she lost it. She did eventually apologize, in what I thought at the time was a fairly half-assed way.

It reminded me of something one of my favorite teachers said to me after I became a teacher, which was that the way teenagers survive is by being the most selfish creatures on the planet. This was a teacher from whom I had learned almost all I knew about literature and critical thinking, and in whose class I had thrown up after getting drunk at lunch one day, and he still gave me an A because it had nothing to do with the quality of my classwork.

Either way, I still want my tape back.

I realized I was gay right about the time I turned eight and noticed that I lingered for just a beat too long every time a shampoo ad—that expanse of exposed neck, the resulting glossy mane—came on the screen. In an unfortunate turn of events for any budding homosexual, I had this realization while living smack in the middle of Central Florida, amidst the “it weren’t no Adam and Steve that God put in Eden” Southern Baptist crowd.

What sustained me was poetry. I lay beneath my knee-tented sheets, reading love poems with a flashlight until the batteries died, trying to learn the great mysteries that I hoped awaited me. Ten years of this, pure feeling—unassociated with any specific person or situation—welled up in me, just waiting for the right woman to come along and tap it. (So to speak.)

And, then, college: a famished stumbling from the desert into the welcoming neon lights of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Women were everywhere—and praise be the Baptist’s god, they were not the rolltop Reebok, acid-washed mom-jean, wife-beater wearing “is that a truck-driver or a lesbian” women from my homestate. Gluttony ensued: first, it was the tour guide I had met during my prospective campus visit; next, the tour guide’s boss (after which I had a nightmare about my mother sitting in bed between us, shaking her head and saying, “Oh, Jessie; you’re supposed to sleep with the people in Admissions BEFORE you get into the school!”); and on and on. Through it all, though, my heart kept its own counsel. This was fun, but it certainly wasn’t love.

But second semester, it happened. While spending the night for a basketball tournament thirty minutes outside of New York City, a friend and I snuck out the back of our hotel and hightailed it to the bright gay lights of downtown Manhattan. We first tried the fabled Meow Mix—the door opening to the most beautiful women of all time, the lights shining down upon us, the music—and then the meaty hand of the bouncer stopping us in our tracks with its demand for IDs. Another bar, another rejection. Finally, we were directed to the divey Henrietta Hudson. (“They’ll let toddlers in there.”) After leaning for hours against the rear barroom wall approached by no one, I jumped to the right to avoid the back of a pool cue to the face and slammed into the woman beside me, spilling her drink.

After much red-faced apologizing, I somehow found the self-possession to offer to buy her a replacement (the first drink I had ever bought in a bar). She was there to celebrate her graduation from med school. She had a sweet, growly little voice, dirty blonde hair, gray eyes, and a hand that kept finding its way to my arm every time she wanted to make a point. Amanda. She had me from “Ouch; what the hell?”

The next week, she moved to New Hampshire, where she was studying for the state boards and working crazy doctor hours in a private practice. Still, we managed to find time to talk every night. This was prior to cell phones and before I owned an answering machine; so I found myself turning down nights out with friends to stay in my room to be there when she called.

When she said she was so busy she hadn’t been eating well, I went shopping for her groceries and prepared a feast. When she said she wished she could see me every day, I went out and bought a box of Ansel Adams postcards and, on each, copied out one of my favorite love poems of all time. I chose them carefully—Neruda, Rilke, Adrienne Rich’s “Untitled (Floating Poem)”. I sent a postcard a day, hoping she would conflate the poems’ beauty, their infinite sensitivity, with me.

In the five months we dated, we only saw each other a handful of times, each visit the result of a 3 1/2 hours each-way trip by me between upstate New York and New Hampshire. I drove those highways crazy with the need to be with her, accumulating speeding tickets like keepsakes. One morning, on the road back to New York at six am to make a ten o’clock class, I ended up driving through a blizzard, so exhausted I had to keep the heat off and my hand pressed to the freezing glass of the window in order to stay awake. Yet, I never even questioned if such extremes were worth just one more night in her bed. The all-consuming yes of it was obvious.

In a way, this long-distance set-up was the ideal way for my overblown love to take hold. At such a distance, she could be the Odette to my Swann, Proust’s transparent envelope into which I could stuff a decade’s worth of speculation and desire. I came to her with my chest stretched wide almost to the breaking point, my hope undiluted and powerful enough to gloss over any and all of her imperfections. But the final straw did finally arrive on the day of my nineteenth birthday.

It was supposed to be her first visit to me, and I spared no effort to make sure it wouldn’t be the last: I held indulgent friends hostage with a “possible first outfit” montage; I cleaned not only my dorm room, but the surrounding hallways. But, at the last minute, she called to say she was too tired from studying to make the trip. Suddenly, all the hope in the world wasn’t enough to cope with this slight. Every excuse, every instance in which I had been called upon to give again and again while she did nothing but take came rushing back to me. I was done and I told her so. Much crying, all on my part, ensued. But somehow, thankfully, I stayed firm in my resolve to keep things ended.

Amanda, I have had many relationships since then—good, bad, and occasionally wonderful—but none of them have I been able to approach with that same open-hearted romanticism that characterized my relationship with you. From your phone calls, which have come roughly every six months since we broke up more than ten years ago—Just calling to say hi and see how you are!”—I know you’re now living in St. Thomas with two dogs and a new girlfriend, making tons of money and saving the bulk of your enthusiasm for playing pick-up soccer games and drinking beer on the deck of your boat.

So, Amanda, I’m writing to say I want my innocence back. You and I both know you have no use for it.

“Why do you want to marry my son?” she asked.

Even over the hiss of the espresso machines in the coffee shop, I could hear her loud and clear. In her tone, I heard the following: that I wasn’t good enough for her son, that I wasn’t Jewish, that I wasn’t welcome, that I was an intruder. There wasn’t enough time to continue the list of things her tone could mean before I had to respond to her question.

I held my shoulders square and said, “He asked me to marry HIM,” with the rash temper of who I was when I was twenty-two. I resented the tone of her voice and that she questioned me, when it was she who had to accept me into her family. However, over the course of the ensuing discussion, I agreed to convert to Orthodox Judaism, no small concession, but one I understood was important to her and to our union. My husband had not asked me to convert, but it was the beginning of my understanding of what marriage meant.

I was beginning to understand that marriage now included our families. And thus began my relationship with my mother-in-law, who became one of the greatest influences in my life; there are times while peeling a potato or cooking food, or supporting friends that I pause, feeling the wind blown out of my body and realize, “This is her.”

I remember how, on our second Seder dinner together almost fifteen years ago, she handed me a potato to peel and chop. “Do you have a vegetable peeler,” I asked.

An expert cook, her lips curled into something not-quite-a-smile that I came to know as deep amusement. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, and a panic swept through me, wanting to be helpful, wanting approval, but knowing that somehow I was letting her down. I remember keeping my temper in check and adding, “I don’t know how to peel without a vegetable peeler.”

She waved over her sister, my husband’s aunt, and started chuckling, speaking in Hebrew. It was obvious she was summarizing my predicament. Her sister smiled and patted my shoulder. I felt humiliated.

But then—she did something unexpected: she showed me how to peel a potato with a knife, the blade going over the skin at a perpendicular angle to her thumb. I had watched my mother do the same thing, and had always been in awe at how she had never ended up thumb-less, and again I felt the same. My mother-in-law peeled slowly, showing me the mechanics of how to peel, adding, “This is how…” and “you will learn…” Then, she handed me an old vegetable peeler. “Use whichever is comfortable to you.”

I peeled that potato with the vegetable peeler, and chopped with awkward earnestness, like Jacques Pepin’s daughter, Claudine Pepin.

When I finally braved peeling a potato and then an apple, years and years later, I thought of that moment, feeling victorious. I still remember that day, every time I peel a potato or an apple, the skin coming down in one long curly strip. I think of her every time I cook a family recipe, of which I know many; it wasn’t long after the potato peeling incident that I asked her to teach me how to cook all my husband’s favorite foods. I can hear her voice directing me through all the steps, as if it were my very first time cooking the dish, even if it’s now the hundredth.

We bonded through cooking. She hated the term “foodie” even though she was one, to the core. She took me to Surfas, the cooking supply store in Los Angeles, showing me bags of lavender and utensils that looked like torture instruments, ones I later came to ooh and ahh over when I became a good cook, just like her. We got up early and went to the farmers’ market, where I learned how to pick vegetables, and learned what fennel was.

I eventually went to go work for her family business; she and I had become fast friends, developing inside jokes that had my husband rolling his eyes—it made sense to work for her. We had “clicked.”

It wasn’t an easy job. She was a demanding boss, one that oftentimes contrasted with who she was as a tender and protective mother, and at times I was shocked and hurt and offended by her behavior at work. But still, there were things I learned from her in that tough role. There was one day, after a doctor screamed at me for half an hour straight, that she found me in an empty exam room, bawling my eyes out. I had held my tears back during the tirade, but afterwards, I felt all of five years old. I remember she told me to scream at him back, to which I responded, “That’s not nice. Why should I be as mean as him?”

I will never forget what she told me in response. In an ideal world, she told me, a win/win situation is best. But, she added, “If it is a choice between him being happy and you being happy, let the happy one be YOU.” She said it in her Israeli Hebrew accented English, which to this day, reminds me of a happy yowling feline. I repeat it to myself when in situations I must fight, and I repeat it to friends who are in situations where they must fight. I quote her all the time during adversarial situations, when I am the underdog.

And speaking of underdogs—she taught me how to fight. She taught me to fight well, because she herself was a fighter. She had been an underdog almost her whole life, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, a scrappy rebellious girl.

And that—that is how it ended. We got into a fight. Because of work. Between her temper and mine, her stubbornness and mine, and the lessons we learned from each other on keeping the upperhand, we didn’t speak for three years. I heard later that she was mustering up the strength to talk to me again, broker peace. I was beginning to regret the fight; I would have gone to her if there had been a window, and if she had been braver than I was and come to me, I would have been grateful.

But that never happened. Because she died. She died suddenly, in a car accident. My last words to her were, “I don’t want to speak to you again.” I didn’t mean it. I thought, in my typical dramatic style, that there would be resolution, even if years later. There was none, and I learned the awful lesson that time is not a given.

Dear G*d, dear Death, dear Time, dear Fate, I want my mother-in-law back.

When you expressed interest in this book—really the first time you expressed much interest in anything I said—I was excited. Maybe this book would help YOU want to be a better person. To not be so self-centered, to stop putting yourself two steps in front of me when we were walking down the street, to generally stop saying the stupid crap I once thought was endearing but was really getting bored of. I told you I don’t loan books, and you promised you’d read it right away, and I’d get it back. So I brought it to you.

Well . . . it’s been three years, and I guess my plot to help you become a better person didn’t work, because I still don’t have my book. I guess I could have been nicer, too. Maybe you’re holding it hostage until I return that call from three years ago.

If that’s the case, my bad.