Becoming

was just persistent. It crept up the stairwell that separated our space from Robbie’s. It drift ...

sound of cheers from the adult-league softball games going on at the nearby public park, where ...

kept all my stuffed animals on the bed, painstakingly tucking them around my head each ...

I registered for a choral music workshop there in 1943 and been denied a room in the women’s dorm. ...

her; she represented a rigid kind of authority I hadn’t yet encountered elsewhere. She demanded excellence f ...

A room, including the bathroom. In the dining room, he built an elaborate cabinet system to hold his stereo ...

real—and I threw myself into filling out the sight-reading work sheets she gave me. Because we didn’t ha ...

O “But why?” Piano lessons became epic and trying, largely due to my refusal to follow the prescribed method and ...

colored two-door Buick Electra 225, which he referred to with pride as “the Deuce and a Quarter.” ...

to blame. In my family, we have a long-standing habit of blocking out bad news, of trying to forget about ...

sheet music in hand. She shushed the room to silence when it was time for the show to begin. I don’t r ...

I 2 started kindergarten at Bryn Mawr Elementary School in the fall of 1969, showing up with the twin ...

South Side of Chicago. Nobody was talking about self-esteem or growth mind- sets. If you’d had a head ...

A the courage to advocate for herself. I didn’t know whether Teddy and Chiaka had even notice ...

Mexican family next door, arriving home in their pickup loaded with ladders after a long day of pai ...

A As I fumed about my new teacher, she listened placidly, saying things like “Oh, dear” and “Oh, r ...

straight, saying that really nobody over there was all that bad. Basketball, for my brother, seemed to unl ...

M other form of kid diplomacy, or I could just shut her up. The next time DeeDee made one of h ...

bathroom?” or “Why do you need a job?” and then blitz them with follow-ups. One of my early Socratic ...

D limited and maybe so, too, was time. When he wasn’t driving, he now used a cane to get ...