You are currently viewing the stories for “July 2021.”
My father has worked in grocery stores in California for what seems like my entire life. Albertsons, El Super, Northgate Market, Smart and Final, and then Northgate Market again. After graduating high school, he worked his way up from Receiver to Assistant Manager to Grocery Manager and Front End Manager. Sometimes when he started at a new store, he had [...]
Jacob Riis Beach 2012 It was my first time going to Jacob Riis Beach and it was with you. We’d been together for two years. The first year, we were too new, and I felt a last minute anxiety about shedding my clothes in front of you and lazing in the hot sun, an anxiety that I hadn’t felt as [...]
Barbara, Joan, Pat and someone at Rockaway Beach 1956 (photo by Robert A. Pryor) On a muggy summer morning in 1961, with my parents still asleep, I crept into the kitchen and turned on the oven. I was seven years old. I closed the living room window to let the heat build in the apartment. After it did, I turned [...]
I want to be in New York because Sophia is in New York. This leads me from my home in the Jersey suburbs to the waiting room of a doctor’s office, an alumni who will interview me for a prestigious New York college. I sit and wait, squirming, and think about that tired joke about patients and patience. I read [...]
