With a name like “Mary’, a normal Christmas was out of the question. Office parties, secret Santas and twinkle lights are nice, but those are normal. Boring. Mary did not want boring.

This year will be different, she thought. New love means new possibilities, and Mary’s new boyfriend, Paul, was a true romantic. When Mary told Paul that she’d always wanted storybook Christmas, she knew he’d exceed her expectations.

And so, with nearly two weeks to go before Christmas, a large, noisy package arrived at Mary’s house. Mary opened her front door to find a box with holes cut into the top and sides, and something inside was squawking. Mary peered through the holes, but saw only fabric.

Mary lugged the box inside and opened it to find a blanket partially draped over cage, and inside the cage appeared to be a pigeon staring Mary down. The bird was gray with brown flecks on its ruffled wings, and was clearly not any happier to see Mary than Mary was to see it. At the bottom of the cage, atop a pile of crumpled newspaper and a coating of bird droppings was a note: “Merry Christmas, Part 1, love, Paul.”

As Mary was moments into her staring contest with the disgruntled pigeon, her phone rang. “Paul…yes, I just got it. It was so…sweet. A partridge? I thought it was a pigeon! No, I did not see the pear…hold on…” And sure enough, and the bottom of the cage was a pear. “I’m sorry”, said Paul, “I could not find a pear tree, and so I had them throw in a pear.”

Mary did not have the heart to tell Paul that she knew nothing about bird care, or the care of any living thing. Mary was sure that her spider plant had been trying to make a break for it when she found it fallen off the table she’d set it on. But, she thought, I will show Paul I can make this work.

Food. Birds need food. “Well,” she said to the partridge she was still sure was a pigeon, “pigeons like hot dogs, I think I have some in the fridge. Oh no, you, I am not opening that cage. You look like you’d peck my eyes out.” So Mary retrieved a hot dog, broke it into bite sized pieces and pushed them through the cage’s wires.

Mary picked up the cage, set it on the table previously occupied by the spider plant, and replaced the fabric cover over the cage, thinking that Paulie — what better name for a pigeon gifted by a Paul — would want to eat in private.

The next day, the doorbell rang. Mary opened it to find a courier with an even larger box with holes cut into the sides. Mary took the box inside and opened it to find another cage with two more pigeons. Their wings were slightly more colorful than Paulie’s, almost gold-laced, but make no mistake, they were pigeons. That arrogant look, the head thrust forward, the overall gray. Just what I wanted, thought Mary, more pigeons.

This time, the note was taped to the outside of the cage. “Two turtle doves, for my love dove! Merry Christmas, love Paul.”

Mary carried Paulie 2 and Paulie 3 upstairs, why give a new name to something that won’t answer, and treated them to the same hot dog meal.

“You probably want water”, she said. “Well I’m still not opening that cage.” So, Mary found two Ziploc bags, slid them partway through the doors of the Paulies’ cages, and, using a straw, siphoned water into each bag before lowering the bags to the cage floor and clipping them to the side of the cage. Ha, thought Mary, that will show that spider plant! MacGyver could not have built a better bird feeder.

But it took just one curious peck from Paulie to tear the bag loose and send water spilling out of the cage and on to the floor. And with it came uneaten pieces of hot dog.

Well, she thought, I guess I am going to have to open the cages, and find different food while I’m at it.

Mary looked at Paulie, and then Paulie and Paulie. “You like bird seed, right? Well, we don’t have any of that, and the pet store is closed. How does granola sound?”

Mary retrieved some thick gardening gloves to protect her from the anticipated attack, opened Paulie 1’s cage a crack, and drooped a piece of a granola bar inside. Paulie stayed on his perch. Braver now, but still not taking off her gardening gloves, Mary opened the cage wider and placed a dish of water inside. She repeated the ritual for Paulies 2 and 3. They look awfully chummy, Mary thought, maybe it’s Paulie and Paulette.

The next morning, Mary came downstairs to find the three birds chirping away, the granola bars uneaten, and the water dishes tipped over. Mary was just about to scold them for the mess when the doorbell rang again.

Mary had a hunch what she would find, and lo and behold, another box and an even larger cage, but this time instead of a pair of cooing pigeons, Mary found three fat chickens. The note this time read “three French hens for my amour.” Oh for Pete’s sake, she thought, did the man get a bulk discount at Billy Bob’s Bird Bazaar? And hens? Will they lay eggs? Does he expect me to start a hatchery?

She picked up the phone to tell Paul what she really thought of her gifts, but paused. He means well, and this has to be it, right? She replaced the phone and turned her attention to the three hens.

Mary knew what chickens ate. She’d visited a farm as a child and remembered the coops. “Corn…chickens like corn. It’s out of season. What would MacGyver do?” So, Mary went to the kitchen, opened a can of creamed corn, put it in a dish and placed it at the bottom of la cage au faux.

The next day, a box arrived that was taller than Mary herself. The courier had to help her bring it inside. Mary dreaded opening the box. It was worse than she imagined. Inside she found an enormous cage containing an irate crow, a screaming seagull (that had made quite the mess of the cage), a blue jay, and an owl.

Mary had to tell Paul enough. But, she hated confrontation and fear she’d back down if she heard his voice. So Mary composed a text:

Paul, thank you for the gifts. You really shouldn’t have. I mean you REALLY shouldn’t have. Ten birds? Ten screaming, molting, pecking, pooping, birds? Five golden rings would have been lovely. Five onion rings would have been fine. But birds? I am donating the birds to a local zoo, because no living thing deserves this, not them, not me. Merry Christmas, but I am converting to Judaism. They only do 8 days of gifts, and most of those days are chocolate coins.

They say that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But, that presumes that those who do remember the past, and those who do not, wish to avoid a recurrence.

President Trump routinely evokes two phrases from the past: “fake news” and “America First”.

The phrase “fake news” is strikingly similar to Adolf Hitler’s “lugenpresse”, German for “lying press”, which Hitler would scream during his rallies.

More troubling than Trump’s use of “fake news” is his phrase “America First”, and the policies he employs in its name.

America First was the name of Charles Lindbergh’s committee formed during World War II that advocated appeasing Hitler keeping the United States out of the War. Lindbergh was a proponent of some tenets of Nazism, writing in an essay that America must “preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood.” In 1941, Lindbergh gave a speech at an America First rally in which he blamed “the Jewish race” for pushing America to intervene in the War.[1]

Philip Roth, in his novel The Plot Against America, theorized what would have become of the country had Lindbergh and his group prevailed. Roth paints a world not only in which Jews live in terror, but in which nativism and Nazism is the new world order. And Roth’s vision was not far from becoming a reality.

The America First Committee not only would have had the country allied with the most evil regime in history, but Lindbergh’s obsession with maintaining the purity of “European blood”, and the Committee’s racist claims that Jewish refugees would endanger America, were directly responsible for turning literal boatloads of the Holocaust’s refugees back to face gruesome deaths by starvation, by ovens, by poison gas.[2]

Ships such as the St. Luis, packed with 900 refugees desperately seeking asylum, were turned away and sent back to Germany and its death camps. It is important to note that the St. Louis set sail after Kristallnacht. The refugees aboard were not merely seeking a better life, they were seeking rescue from execution. One third of those 900 aboard were later murdered by the Nazis.[3] Among those denied asylum was Anne Frank.[4]

This week, Trump’s Director of f US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinnelli, stated in an interview that we should change the inscription on the Statute of Liberty to “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”[5]

Trump has revived the America First Committee’s name, and its racist policies. Once again, our country is turning away refugees fleeing violence, using racist fears that the refugees pose a danger. Trump’s complaint that too many immigrants came from “s-hole countries”, and his statement that the country should limit immigration from certain countries in favor of “immigrants from places like Norway” echo Lindbergh’s cries to “preserve European blood” and the America First Committee’s racist claims that Jewish refugees were somehow dangerous or inferior to Anglo-Saxon immigrants.

The America First of today not only leaves refugees on distant shores in danger, but endangers Americans as well. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a gunman slaughtered 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue and injured many others. The shooter’s stated reason for the massacre was that Jews were funding immigration.

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, right wing media personalities had begun claiming that “Globalists” — alt-right slang for “Jews” — were funding the migrant caravans. Trump himself asserted this claim, just one week before the massacre. [6]

More recently, a shooter in El Paso murdered 30 and injured dozens of others. He told police that he chose his locale and his victims because he sought to stop an “invasion” of immigrants, a phrase used by Trump, along with variations of “immigrant infestations” in dozens of tweets and rallies [7]

There can be little doubt that the America First of World War II cost thousands of refugees their lives. Philip Roth imagined how many more would have died had Lindbergh prevailed. I wonder how many would have been saved if America had said “decency first”, instead of America First.

If the president did study World War II history, he is adhering to the wrong side of it.

While there is no war raging today, at least not on a battlefield, we are faced with refugees in need, refugees seeking what is inscribed on the Statute of Liberty, rather than what Trump would have inscribed upon it. Will we say “America First”, or will we stand by the values this country was founded on? The history is being written today.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/america-first-for-charles-lindbergh-and-donald-trump

[2] https://apnews.com/ae9d3c4fd60842e58bfd955ea8cda645

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-refugees-in-the-us/514742/

[4] https://www.jta.org/2018/07/06/global/anne-franks-family-never-denied-us-visas-study-states

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/13/politics/ken-cuccinelli-statue-of-liberty/index.html

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/nationalist-president-trump.html

[7] https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-language-mexican-immigrants-scrutiny-wake-el-paso/story?id=64768566

I will eat anything. From $1-sushi to filet mignon, from gyro to grasshopper. Sweetbreads, kidneys, Rocky Mountain oysters, nothing is off limits. If it’s not toxic, and not cilantro, I’ll eat it.

So, when I first ventured into the world of online dating, I presumed finding a like-minded match would be easy.

I’m Jewish, but I’m more of what I call a “gastronomic Jew.” That is, I don’t so much observe, as eat. The sites dedicated to religion tended to attract the highly observant, or, worse (at least for me), the Kosher. Bad news for the boy who considered bacon its own food group. I chose a generic site, a site that promised to find my perfect match based upon dozens of scientific bases of compatibility. So of course the site matched me with…a vegan.

Her name was Heather. It probably still is. Our first date, rather than coffee or a glass of wine, was for vegan cupcakes. I’d never met a cupcake I did not like. Until that night. Picture a bran muffin, only denser and with less flavor. I could not eat it, but on the good hand, it would have made a handy weapon had I been mugged on the way home.

I knew Heather and I had virtually nothing in common, but she had that special something I look for in a woman: a willingness to go out with me again. So, I agreed to a second date.

I like vegetables themselves. After all, you can’t mess up steamed broccoli, a stuffed artichoke or a salad. It’s when you get into the “mock” foods that they lose me. Vegetarian “chicken”, vegetarian duck, even a gigantic vegetarian “haute” dog; or, as I called it, a toe-footlong.

Heather also loved organic foods, which she swore tasted better. I tried some and was disappointed: it tasted nothing like organ.

One night, Heather tried to convert me to a vegan lifestyle with one of her home-cooked meals. She swore I’d love seitan, which she explained was “TVP” — textured vegetable protein. It sounded about as appetizing as a “meat-flavored snack”. Heather had countless recipes for it: Seitan Parmesan (with vegan cheese); grilled seitan; moo shu seitan. Heather promised that it tasted just like chicken. Heather, a lifelong vegan, never tasted chicken.

Against my better judgment, I tried her moo shu seitan. I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know with certainty whether there was a connection, but I woke up the next day with palpitations. I saw my doctor, who advised I was in “a-fib”, or atrial fibrillation, doctor shorthand for abnormal heart rhythm. I blame the seitan. The doctor prescribed further tests. I prescribed bacon. I was right! A few slabs of Oscar Meyer’s finest, and I was feeling fine!

Heather and I did not work out. She was kind, smart and fun, but she could not stand commercial fabric softener, real milk, down pillows, or, of course, steak. I admire her resolve, I do, if there were more people out there like Heather, the world would be a healthier, and likely kinder, place. But it’s not me. Most of my meals involve one or more meat dishes. If G-d did not want me to eat meat, He would not have made it so tasty. Everything is better with bacon. Even bacon. I’ll do a lot for love, but I won’t eat tofurkey. So, I updated my online dating profile to include one important question: Eat prey, love?

Seitanic Verses was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Good parents become the yardstick by which you measure love and all it entails. Caring, nurturing, safety, sharing your joys, solace from sadness. They are your home long after you leave their house, the place you fit, not just for now, but where you’ll fit for life.

Growing up, my world was a quiet house on a quiet street in a quiet suburb in New York. We did not lock the door to our house at night, and did not have to look both ways before crossing the street. I played atop head-high mounds of snow piled, claiming my title of King of the Mountain, before tumbling down to land softly, but wetly, on the dirtied slush at the bottom.

The biggest danger plaguing my young world was the towering spruce tree in the corner of my parents’ front yard. Standing over 18 feet tall, it dwarfed everything: our house, the electric wires, and me, and it was just begging to be climbed, especially when the girl across the street, Jennifer, dared me to climb it. Jennifer was everything I was not: tall, athletic, daring, vivacious, pretty! When she said “climb!”, I asked, “how high?” I climbed as high as I could, moving from the thick, sturdy limbs down low, to the sparser, thinner ones higher up. I wanted to be King of the Mountain! But Newton had other ideas (what comes up must come down), and I, as my mother later put it, “fell and went boom!” This would not be the last time I went out on a limb to impress a girl, and it would not be the last time I fell fast and hard as a result.

Luckily I was only banged up. My mother put a Band-Aid on each cut, said “Kiss and make better!,” and it magically did feel better. It seemed there was nothing that a Band-Aid and those magic words could not heal.

Of course, we learn too soon, parent and child alike, that there are some wounds that magic words and Band-Aids cannot heal.

By the time I was three years old, I’d had been hospitalized numerous times, for everything from multiple eye surgeries and a near-fatal allergy to anesthesia, to Reye’s Syndrome. It cost my mother untold hours, weeks and years of worry, and ultimately cost her job. She was Head of Copyright at a large record company, but was forced out. There was no family leave law then, only “come in to work, or stay with the sick kid, your choice”. I tried to make up for it by being good. Mom tried to make up for it by trying to save me from the world.

So, by the time kindergarten rolled around, my mother was not about to let me go in alone. To ensure I would not enter the Brave New World unprotected, my mother devised a way to ensure that I’d not have to face the first day myself: music. She marched me into class that first day, and, rather than seeing me off with a kiss goodbye, walked in, her 12-string Martin guitar in hand, and announced to the class that she would lead us in sing-alongs. She sang the classics — The Wheels on the Bus; John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt; Frere Jacques, and she added my personal favorite, Shell Silverstein’s “I’m Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor.”: I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor, I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, And I don’t like it one little bit.

Mom came in to school monthly to sing for us, and often brought homemade chocolates or cookies. “One for each hand!,” she’d exclaim as she passed out two chocolates to each child, as she always did for me at home.

I did not realize then how much my mother was sacrificing, just as she had her career years earlier.

My mother, like any parent, was someone’s child herself, someone in need of a parent’s nurturing, guidance, and care. But her mother, my grandmother, who had successfully battled a brain tumor when my mother was in her late teens, was now battling multiple myeloma. My mother’s days were spent running to and from Long Island Jewish Hospital. Looking back, I rarely saw Mom eat, and she was so thin and tired, so sick herself, that her doctor gave her a portable heart monitor. It was a black rectangle, no bigger than a Walkman, with a metal node on the back she’d hold up to her chest, and it would record her heart rhythm. She’d have to call a phone number at the end of the day, and hold the monitor up the phone. It would emit a long, shrill beep, laying out the beats and inner workings of my mother’s heart to a computer listening on the other end of the line.

I recalled that each time I was sick, or the times, later, when I was bullied at school, it would break that heart. I decided fairly early that the best protection I could give my mother’s heart was to shield her from injury to mine. So, I decided not tell my parents when things were rough. I’d not tell them if I’d been bullied, I’d not tell them of my first broken heart (though mothers always know) or any of the broken hearts that would follow.

I knew what the doctors did not. I knew what was wrong with my mother’s heart — an excess of empathy. If someone she cared for is upset, she feel it viscerally, a physical sensation that something is off. How much pain can you watch your child go through before your heart breaks? What can a parent do, what is a parent, when a kiss can’t make it better?

Home is not what you’d run into a fire to protect. It’s whom you’d run into a fire to protect.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. Maybe you never really leave it in the first place. Whether we move minutes, or miles or even oceans away, those connections, those things that make the heart swell or ache, are there. Even when we grow apart, they are always our parents, and we, always their children. As long as we draw breath, they remain home, regardless of where we live.

Heart of a Mother was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One day before Valentines’ Day. I’m in a Coach store staring at a rack of palm-sized pocketbooks that cost far more money than you could possibly fit into them. But, I’m not here buying, I’m returning. Returning a larger, equally overpriced bag I’d purchased for my as-of-last night-ex girlfriend two days ago, before I learned that she engaged in, let’s say, extracurricular activities with a clerk at the Apple Store.

“Is there a problem with the bag?”, the cashier asks. “No”, I say, “the bag is fine. It’s the recipient that’s damaged.”

The recipient’s name was Randi. It probably still is. I’d given Randi the bag as an early Valentine’s Day gift in advance of what was to be a romantic trip for two to Mexico. We were to fly out tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, landing in time for a day at the beach, followed by a romantic meal.

We had one of those whirlwind romances where you think you’ve fallen in love within a few weeks. Which is exactly why they should not call it falling in love. Falling is one-directional. Love is not. Love is more a parabola. A roller coaster. Love climbs upward, giving you a splendid view of everything below before hurtling down to earth. But unlike the top of a roller coaster, you don’t know when the down is coming. You forget Newton, you forget logic, and you think only, “it’s beautiful up here!”

So, it was the age-old story: Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl has a fling or 5 with the clerk from the Apple store.

Randi tried to apologize, in a way: she admitted it had been going on for a few weeks, said she was sorry, and offered what was apparently to be her Valentines’ Day gift to me, a pack of Hostess Sno-balls. Green. Not even the pink or white ones. Green. Maybe a St Patrick’s Day version.

When someone cheats on you it speaks volumes about the health of the relationship. When someone cheats on you and apologizes with synthetic snack cakes, it’s time to move on.

The Coach bag was returnable. The plane tickets and room deposit for Mexico, not so much. So it’s off to Rivera Maya for a romantic vacation for two, for one.

I’ve traveled solo before and found nothing lacking. There’s freedom in choosing your own schedule, meals and activities without worrying if a companion is enjoying themselves. Want to hike that trail twice, no problem! Want to stay a bit longer at the beach, who’s to say no?

I’d also dined alone, in dives and five-star restaurants alike, and there is something nice about that, too. I’d people watch, enjoy a good book, or just concentrate on savoring each bite of a delicious meal.

But Valentines’ Day dining is different. Turning a romantic Valentine’s Day trip for two to a Valentine’s Day trip for one is different. But, I thought, the money’s spent anyway, so I may as well give it a go. So I boarded the plan and set out on for my Valentine in paradise for one.

Our, well, my, room was not ready when I checked in to the hotel, so I dropped my bags with the front desk, strolled the grounds, and immediately felt at ease: Outside, in a palm-sheltered courtyard, stood a piano, there for anyone to play. Not part of a stage grouped with guitar stands or a place for a singer, just an upright piano, standing solo in the shade. There’s something about a piano standing alone that says it’s okay to play solo.

The piano was brightly decorated, covered in sequins and fake gems — a piano clearly made for either a Bedazzler commercial, or for Liberace. I could have played Beethoven or Billy Joel, but somehow the Bedazzle’d piano begged for Elton John, so played I Candle in the Wind, Bennie and the Jets, and a few others.

After a few songs, I felt relaxed and headed up to our-now-my room.

I’d booked a junior suite with a balcony complete with Jacuzzi and a view of the ocean. The all-inclusive package came with an in-room bar. Although I was sure the rest of the week would be fine dining on my own, Valentine’s dinner solo at a restaurant did not seem fun. But, if dinner for one with a book works back at home, room service for one with plentiful whiskey and a view of the ocean works better. Rather than the romantic strawberry mimosa offered on their Valentines’ menu, I opted for the house — made bacon infused vodka. “I’ll have a vodka martini, I told the desk, “bacon, not stirred.”

Later in the week, I was fine dining solo at the resort’s restaurants. The restaurants’ menus were still set up for couples, but that did not stop me. I am talented pianist, but my real talent is eating. I once took a vacation in Chicago just to eat. I went to the Tastes of Chicago Festival and dined at one of those molecular gastronomy places that had a 26-course tasting menu. I topped it off with a stuffed pizza chaser. It works for those guys on TV. What’s my prize?

So, an all-inclusive, all-you-can-eat resort was right up my alley. The wait staff soon got to know me, and learned that “mesa par una, senior” did not mean bring half the food,. In fact, plan on seconds. Sushi for two became sushi for two for one. Chocolate soufflé for two became “well, twice the chocolate for me!” They had a glorious homemade pasta, flambéed tableside in a giant wheel of cheese, served, of course, for two. You say “gluttony”, I say “challenge.”

My last day in Mexico, I climbed an Aztec pyramid in Chichin-Itza. I stood solo at the peak, and enjoyed the wonderful view below. Climbing back down, I turned back towards the pyramid in awe, seeing how far I’d come.

On my final night in Mexico, the waiter asked “where does the weight go?” I replied “if there’s a G-d, to my ex’s waist, like a gluttonous Dorian Gray.” If I gain weight at the end of the story, at least I’d have enjoyed it until then.

So, Valentines’ Day solo was not too bad after all. I saw wonderful sites, and ate so much chocolate I’d never miss stale drug-store candies.

If you’re out there, Randi, I bear you no ill will. I hope you are married, and that you and the man you’re cheating on him with are very happy together. May you remember that love comes and goes, but Sno-Balls last forever.

Mesa For One was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I need a corn dog and an Icee. Don’t judge. It’s my busy season, and I comfort eat.

Everyone has that one boss who rides them. My boss has been on my butt for millennia. So I’m going to get my corn dog Jeff, damn it.

Fudge! He hates it when I call him Jeff. Or in his original Hebrew, Yahweh. Jehovah. God. Whatever you call him, he’s my boss. He was already on my case because my reports were late, but now I’ll never hear the end of it. You’d think that being all-powerful and all-knowing would come with a certain confidence. But no, thousands of years, and Jeff still gets testy when you use his childhood nickname. I’ll have to buy him a box of chocolate truffles to keep the peace. Don’t get me wrong, he’s as kind as you’ve read. Full of peace and love. But, there are deadlines to stick to, souls to save, and if you fall down on the job, well, let’s just say you do not want to be on his bad side.

I am taking my lunch break at the Galleria Mall in Hoboken, New Jersey, and that corn dog? I’m going to expense it. I’m on the job. You see, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past, and in this day and age, my humans are not spending Christmas Eve at their offices like old Ebenezer. No, these paragons of hard work and goodness are at the mall, looking to score that last two thousand inch TV for $499.99.

My newest charge, Barry, sits one table away at the food court, chatting away on his $900 smart phone. He’s screaming at his secretary, Cheryl, to “get those damn reports out!” Cheryl, I know the feeling.

Barry is what you’d expect: twenty-eight years old, dressed in a silk suit, Gucci loafers, and gold Rolex, and he’s screaming into his Bluetooth at his underpaid secretary while typing away on his iPad. Among his other stellar traits, Barry convinced a children’s charity to buy over $10,000 in stock in a company he knew would tank. Barry himself short-sold the same stock. Barry has been a bad boy. I am to show Barry the error of his ways, to show him the Meaning of Christmas, blah, blah, blah. But Barry is too engrossed in his iPhone to care. They may as well have named it mePhone

I am about to indulge in the deep fried, sweet and savory goodness that is a corn dog, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Still doing this?” a familiar whines.

Do not turn around, I think. The voice continues. “Christmas, and here you are trying to help one soul again. They don’t even need you! Memories of Christmas Past. Ha! Barry has all of his memories on Facebook. It reminds him of his past each year. What does he need you for?!”

“But — “, I begin

“But — ” the voice mimics, “Make something of yourself!” it whines, jabbing my shoulder with each word. “My daughter won’t wait around for you for ever.”

The voice belongs to my soon-to-be mother-in-law. The Ghost of Christmas Nagging. Or, as I call her, Gertrude. I turn around. Gertrude is dressed in a form-fitting Vera Wang gown, and like the other restless souls of the greedy and deceased, sports Jacob Marley chains.

“Let me guess?” I say, “Chain Gang? Unchained Melody? Chains of Love?

“Very original, Ringo.”

This is not her attempt at a joke. That is my name, for the past fifty years anyway. The rest of us are named after apostles or saints: John. Paul. George. But for the past fifty years, Jeff has called me Ringo, who says he lacks a sense of humor?

Before I can get away — I do have work to do — Gertrude grasps my hand and transports me on one of her journeys.

Where I prefer to use subtlety to inspire, showing my humans their pasts to remind them what they could be, Gertrude favors the heavy-handed approach. In rapid succession, she shows me Gabriel offering his revelations; Moses taking the Ten Commandments. She jumps a millennium to Salk and his polio vaccine, Bill Gates and his computer, and, of course, Steve Jobs with the first version of Barry’s iPhone.

“You’re wasting your talents, Ringo, showing people their pasts. The innovators show the future! They prognosticate! Predict! Invent! They are the world-changers.”

“I can’t exactly moonlight. This is the job Jeff assigned me.”

“Nonsense”, Gertrude says, “show some chutzpah. Innovate!”

With that, she is gone, and I am back in the food court, sitting one table away from Barry.

I glance at Barry’s iPad, and briefly consider short selling whatever stock he is hawking to his next victim. Then, I have a better idea. I pull out my phone (are you really surprised?) and text Jeff:

Boss, I have an idea how to help Barry, all of the Barrys. Each time Barry yells at his assistant, or each time he tries to swindle someone, let’s transfer $10 dollars from his account to a charity. Let’s have a text pop on his phone reading, “your act of greed has been transformed to one of kindness. We have transferred $10 from your account to Feed the Children. Thank you, Jeff. I mean Jehovah. I mean, God.”

In a few seconds, I get a text back:

First, Don’t call me “Jeff”. Yes, I heard you. I always hear you. Second I like it! It may take a while for Barry to catch on, but all the better. I’m sending the software to his phone now. Now, get back here with those truffles, and they better be French. Finally, Ringo, Merry Christmas. Good initiative, and welcome to your new job as the Ghost of Christmas Change.

The Ghost of Christmas Pest was originally published in Lit Up on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I know half-life of Penicillin. I know the half-life of Uranium. But what is the half-life of a broken heart?

Maybe it depends upon the severity of the break.

Charles Bukowski said, “My heart is 1,000 years old.” My heart is more like Indiana Jones: It’s not the age: it’s the miles.

It started out whole, impervious, and capable of limitless love. But that was many years ago, many loves ago, and many breaks ago. It’s not that my heart is more fragile than others, like some brittle bone disease — no, it’s more that mine simply has farther to fall: the difference between dropping a glass off the counter, and dropping it off the Empire State Building, not so much breaking as shattering into pieces. My problem is that I don’t fall in love. Falling is one-directional. For me, love is a bungee cord in reverse: skyrocketing skyward, then pausing only briefly at the top before plummeting down. When I love someone, or even like them, I am like the Tasmanian Devil in those Bugs Bunny cartoons. I am uncontainable energy, jubilance in motion. When I am in love, I am the top of the roller coaster. But, unlike the top of a roller coaster, I seem forget that down is inevitably coming. I forget Newton, I forget logic, and I think only, “it’s beautiful up here!”

I don’t know how many people remember their first crush or the resultant heartache, but I do: I was 8. Her name was Jennifer. It probably still is.

Jennifer was everything I was not: tall, athletic, daring, vivacious, pretty! So, when Jennifer dared me to climb the towering spruce in my parents’ front yard, I did without a second thought. I climbed as high as I could, from the thick, sturdy limbs at the tree’s base, to the sparser, thinner ones higher up. As my mother later put it, I “fell and went boom!” This would not be the last time I went out on a limb to impress a girl, and it would not be the last time I fell far and hard as a result.

And so it was, 30 years later, I had not learned a thing.

Janna was perfection on paper, or on computer screen, at least, for we’d met online. Janna was a model, turned singer, turned attorney. Her profile pictures, however, were strictly from her modeling days; a series of pouting, brooding, hand-on-hip pictures that featured everything but a smile.

She was beautiful, but in a way that was almost too orchestrated: waist-length dyed platinum hair, porcelain skin, form-fitting designer gowns, and bejeweled headbands. She was like a live-action Disney princess. I’m convinced she was not born, but drawn.

I’d come to our first date equipped with a plan sure to sweep any cat lover off her paws: I bought a tiny catnip-filled mouse, and as I walked Janna back to the subway, I pulled it out of my pocket, saying “I am sure J’adore’s opinion carries a great deal of weight in choosing who to date, so I’d like you to give this to her, from me, in the hopes that she will convince you to go out with me again.” Janna laughed and told me that she did not need J’adore to convince her, she’d already decided on a second date by the time we’d finished our first cup of tea. Oh boy, I thought, I was in trouble.

Two months later, it was Valentine’s Day, and I went all out. She loved Paris, so I gave her Paris. I took her to Le Cirque, took her to see An American in Paris on Broadway, and topped it off with dessert at her favorite patisserie. Janna was blown away. She took my hand across the table and told me it had been her best Valentines’ Day ever. I did not know whether she was seeing other people — I secretly hoped not — so I tried to ask her in most subtle way I could imagine. I asked, “I’d love see you next week, but I don’t want to be presumptuous. You could have a date with a hot musician, a wonderful architect, or a cute lawyer.” (I’m a lawyer). She gave the perfect answer: “I hope I have a date with a cute lawyer next week”, and again took my hand. Oh boy, I thought, I’m in trouble.

What followed was a whirlwind romance. I met her family, we exchanged “I love you’s”, I baked homemade French macarons for her every week, as they were her favorite indulgence, and sent her flowers every month. I took her to the opera often, though I was not a fan, and toured countless fashion exhibits with her, though, God, I loathed it, because I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to stay.

We were approaching the height of the honeymoon phase, that part, for me,that is like reaching the top of the roller coaster before it begins it rapid descent.

We went to DC together to see the cherry blossoms. As we lay in the hotel, sharing a bed for the first time, Janna whispered that when she thought of the future, she’d “want to be a hot 90 year old.” I’d pictured my 90s like the John Lennon song: Grow Old Along With Me. I imagined sitting with my wife in a sun-dappled kitchen, lost in our bathrobes, reading sections of the New York Times through cataract-clouded eyes. I pictured aging gracefully, each wrinkle a memory of a past laugh. Janna pictured routine surgical touch ups, crash diets, and still-dyed hair. She asked if I wanted to make love, and I declined, because we were still getting to know each other and because it was only our first time even sharing a bed. I declined because I was now picturing a hot 90-year old, I declined because I’m a moron.

Janna’s parents came to visit a couple of months later, and Janna asked that I come into the city to meet them for the first time. I was honest when they asked why I worked on Long Island rather than in the city as Janna did; that it was difficult for an older attorney to find a new job. Employers want to hire the young, as they are cheaper. I was under stress because of this, and worse, because there had been layoffs at work. I whispered to Janna how worried and depressed I was, caught in a job I knew was not good for what she wanted me to have (a high-paying job in the city), and panicked that it would be difficult, even impossible, to find something else.

The next week was our six-month ‘anniversary’, to the extent anyone over 18 years old can have anniversaries measured in months. I sent flowers to her office, as had become my monthly ritual. Janna texted one of the pictures of she and I taken under the cherry trees in DC, one in which she’d given in and smiled. I came home to find that she’d posted the same picture on each of our Facebook pages, with the caption, “Happy Anniversary, Howard! I’m so glad we were able to share this!” She made that photo her Facebook profile picture. I felt that silly giddiness reserved for high school romance; grinning like an idiot and confident in our future. Even the stress of an awful month at work seemed to lift.

I had no photos to share, so I wrote her a poem and sent it to her via Facebook messenger, her favored means of communication. It was nothing deep or serious, just a rhymed list of the outings we’d enjoyed over the past months, ending with a quick list of adventures to look forward to in the future. She read it (I received the ‘return receipt’ email) but did not write back. Not to say she liked the poem, not to write any similar statement of her own, not to say thank you. I was irrationally upset, and texted her that a ‘thank you’ would have been nice. She responded that she was going to sleep.

I felt petty, needy, but most of all, worried. She’d just posted “Happy Anniversary” for all her friends to see, and I felt slighted because she’d failed to respond to a silly poem. I woke up after midnight, upset with myself, and decided to email her to apologize, and explain that it was the stress and depression over layoffs at work that caused my mood.But, when I logged on to Facebook, the first thing I saw was that she’d taken down the picture of she and I as her profile picture, and replaced it with one of her solo.

I panicked, and rather than apologizing, I wrote that I’d put a lot of thought into the poem, that meant for it to express her how much she, our time together, meant to me. I wrote that when she did not respond, but instead took down the picture of us she’d just posted, it made me feel like she did not feel the same way. I admit this was stupid of me. It was irrational. But her sole response — “I have a lot of photos of myself I like to share” — did little to ease my feelings.

One week later, she called me to say that I might not be a long-term match for her because I did not live or work in the city. She told me that the distance of our homes — about an hour from Long Island to Manhattan — was a source of anxiety for her. She added that we should not say we loved each other anymore, because it was “too soon”. She backed out of plans we’d made to go away together for Memorial Day Weekend, and backed out of her promise to attend my friend’s wedding with me the following week.

I assured her again that if we ended up together long-term, I’d live in the city and reverse-commute if need be. I meant it too, but I also knew that relationships don’t survive “you may not be a long term match”, coupled with canceling future plans.

You can sometimes sense a breakup coming, the way you can feel a flu coming on. You feel that first tickle in the back of your throat, that nondescript malaise, and you know what’s coming. It’s like that moment before a car accident, where all you can do is white-knuckle the steering wheel and brace for impact.

Janna broke up with me week later in unspectacular fashion, more tears than shouting. She said she tried to have a relationship, but could not; she said that my living on Long Island was a source of stress for her; she said that if I wrote a poem for any girlfriend in the future, I should be dating her a year before doing so. Ouch.

And so began my postmortem. I recalled and chronicled my mistakes. I spent hours baking her macarons. I wrote her poems. I wore my heart on my not-Armani-enough sleeve. I sent her flowers, just because. I was smothering and just too much. I was romantic. I was hopeless. I was a hopeless romantic?

I read a letter in an advice column written by a saddened lover. The writer had been in a relationship for 2 years with a man who never sent flowers, never bought her birthday gifts, and never sent Valentines. The boyfriend felt gifts were unnecessary. The girlfriend asked the expert whether she should speak up and say that a gift, even a small one, would make her feel special. The expert wrote back, “There is nothing worse than being forced to buy someone a gift when you don’t want to.”

Really, expert? There’s nothing worse than having to buy someone a gift? What about abuse? What about infidelity? What about, simply, feeling unloved?

The expert, I think, missed the point. The issue was not whether the woman justified in wanting a gift to feel appreciated, and the issue was not whether the man was right in feeling that being together was enough. The question is not which of them was “right”: The question is, were they right for each other?

That is what I finally realized. I spent so long beating myself up over the anniversary poem. It’s not whether I was right in wishing she’d responded, or whether she was right in feeling she need not respond. The issue was, we were not right for each other. We are all, each one of us, jagged puzzle pieces. The key is to find someone who fills in our edges, gaps, and grooves.

A Jigsaw Heart was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The change of the seasons is not marked by a date, but by a feel. For most, it’s purely cliamatological: you feel that first nip in the air and think of Christmas, or feel the first hint of heat and humidity, and think of days at the beach.

For me, the change of the seasons was marked by food, and no food takes me back to childhood summers more than zeppoles.

For two weeks each July, St. Rose of Lima Church would hold its annual Family Festival, a carnival of games, rides, raffles and foods. I would walk there with my family each year, oddly proud of the fact that our house, located 3 blocks from the church, was a quicker walk than the distant side streets most fairgoers had to park their cars. I’d ride the giant slide, sitting on my father’s lap, he on those burlap sacks you ride on, until that year I was old enough to ride on my own. We’d try our hand at the water race game, shooting water into the clown’s mouth to see if we could pop our balloons the fastest. I never won, because as my balloon grew larger, I’d drop my gun and clasp both hands over my ears in anticipation of the loud pop.

The fair created a certain sense of community. Our neighbors worked the booths, and local merchants sponsored the games and rides. The giant slide was sponsored by a local contractor, the games were sponsored by the local barber (“win by a hair!”), and each booth was a reminder of someone or some business I’d known all my life.

My clearest memory of the fair is of the irresistible goodies. Our fair was not like the fairs of the South, with fried Oreos, fried Twinkies and Fried Butter. Our fair offered nominally “healthier” choices, like sausage and pepper heroes, nachos, and zeppoles. If you’ve never eaten a zeppole, it is an, airy, crispy puff of dough, crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, perfectly fried and coated in powdered sugar. It is love in a greasy paper bag.

The best part about the zeppoles was not the taste or the reminder of summer, but in the dose of irony that accompanied each bag: the zeppoles at the fair were sponsored by the Massapequa Funeral Home. The funeral home’s phone number and logo adorned the zeppole booth itself, the name tags of each booth worker, and was printed on the stickers pasted on each bag. If you bought a dozen, the bag would have two stickers. The booth workers joked (the same joke every year) that if you bought enough zeppoles, you could save the stickers like cereal box tops, and trade in for a prize from their sponsor: free casket with the purchase of 100!

If the tongue-in-cheek sponsorship was meant as a deterrent to the fairgoers, it failed miserably. Year in and year out, no ride, game, raffle or booth drew a bigger crowed than the zeppole booth. The line would snake past the other the food stands, past the giant slide, and past the rectory where casino nights were held. The same neighbors you’d see power walking down the street that morning, or rushing to their pilates or yoga class, would forget their diet and fitness regimes for a Funeral Home Zeppole. The church volunteers who’d spent weeks prior handing out “Stay Active! Be Fit!” fliers to Sunday School students ignored their own advice and gobbled zeppoles by the bagful. It was all for the good of the church, they’d say, because the zeppoles, more than the rides or the games, were the fair’s big money maker.

I am Jewish, so connecting food with grief seemed natural. We hold large feasts on Passover to remind of us of our freedom from slavery, and eat fried potato latkes and donuts on Chanukah to remind us of King Antiochus’s attempt to murder our ancestors. There’s an old joke that all Jewish holidays share the same theme: “we suffered a tragedy, we survived, let’s eat!”

Perhaps inspired by the food-for-all-occasions idea, my mother, who taught Hebrew School, organized field trips for her students to the Jewish funeral home, featuring pizza parties. The goal, Mom said, was to take the fear out of exposure to mortality.

During my grandmother’s funeral, my uncle sent a funeral home worker out to get him a Big Mac. Literally. During. The. Funeral. My uncle called one of the workers over, slipped him a fifty-dollar bill, and sent him off to McDonalds. At first, I thought this was classless. But, as two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun, dripped down his greasy chin and designer tie, I could not help thinking of the food-for-all-occasions connection, and the cynical, angry part of me could not help but wonder what snacks his children would serve at his funeral. But mostly, I thought of Funeral Home zeppoles. We had a tragedy, we survived, let’s eat.

A Culinary Calendar was originally published in Lit Up on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is nothing lonelier, yet more brimming with yearning hope, than Valentine’s Day at the retirement home. It’s equal parts resignation to what you lack, gratitude for what you have left, and an almost visceral longing for what can be, just one more time.

Garden Manor is one of the nicer requirement communities. There are no yellowing curtains or dirtied windows here, no pervasive smell of death, not even the antiseptic smell of hospital. On holidays, the staff does their best to make things bright. Christmastime brings in garland, Santa cutouts and menorahs, the Fourth of July, red, white and blue streamers, and on Valentine’s Day, cardboard hearts are taped on the windows, streamers hang from the ceiling, and breakfast today was heart-shaped pancakes. But, decorations can do only so much. Gilding a desiccated lily. Decorations brighten the outside, but inside, that visceral longing remains.

Today, that longing has a name: Maury.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t have much left to give, but I have this story, so I want to do it right.

Anytime a new male resident arrives, most of the female residents try to win his heart. Most fail: say what you will about men, but are widowers are dedicated to their late wives eternally. They still believe that “til’ death do us part” works both ways.

Our resident ineligible bachelor, as he calls himself, is Sam. The day Sam arrived, he said “Ladies, I’ll dance with you — I still can, you know — I gave my hear to one woman, and that’s forever.”

The other night, I asked Sam whether he held out hope for love, whether he hoped his days could be filled with more than a quick dance. “I’m done with goodbyes”, he said. “I was going to die alone either way. Here at least, someone will find me before I start to stink.”

Not all of us are as ready to give up on romance. I still have hope. Before you picture images of Cocoon; wild, wrinkly sex, defibrillators on standby, that’s not what I mean. I was not that girl when I was young, and I’m certainly not that now. But I want to love and be loved, one more time.

So, that is where Maury came in. Maybe his arriving on Valentine’s Day was kismet. Maybe I was caught between the inspiration of heart-shaped pancakes, and the wake-up call of Sam’s heart-wrenching words. I just want connection. I’m not afraid of loss. I’m afraid of having nothing worth losing. I want to hold hands and share a sunset, our sunset.

The nurses walked him in and introduced him. New residents here all received the same welcome. My welcome here, 8 years ago, was no different. “Everyone, this is Hannah. She is our new resident. Everyone say ‘hi’ to Hannah and help her feel welcomed.”

“Hi, Hannah! Welcome to Garden Manor!”

It reminded me of when I was young and would start a new school. “This is Hannah and she will be your new classmate”, the teacher would announce, “Everyone say ‘hi’ to Hannah.” The class would stare, and I’d feel more a spectacle than welcomed.

So began Maury’s introduction to us. “Everyone, this is Maury. He is our new resident. Everyone say ‘hi’ to Maury and help him feel welcomed.”

“Hi Maury! Welcome to Gar — “

As we walked through our customary greeting, Maury waved his fingers in front of his chest in grand arcs, like a maestro conducting a symphony. As we hit “Gar — ”, he brought his hand up near his right ear and closed his fingers: the maestro’s signal to “stop.”

It’s fair to say that I liked Maury instantly. He wasn’t a looker, with his Einstein hair, his caterpillar eyebrows and flannel shirt, but he was sweet.

“Whadaya’ in for?”, he asked me, like an old prison movie. “The pot roast”, I answered.

It was half-true. My Henry did all the cooking. Sixty years of marriage, and I could count on one hand the times I’d cooked. “That’s I love about you, Hannah”, he’d say, “you only tried to poison me once.”

The first time I cooked for Henry, we were just starting out. I cooked a steak in the oven. It caught fire. I reached for a glass of water, but Henry — he always knew what to do — said you could only put out a grease fire with salt. So, he doused the flaming steak in an entire box of salt. Bless his heart, he ate it. Burned to a crisp, caked in an inch of salt, and he at it, because I made it. From that point on, Henry made all the meals. I think that’s what I miss the most: his cooking. We could go for dinners out, high-class restaurants or tiny cafes, but they never compared to Henry’s pot roast. There’s something about his cooking that nourished beyond the food on the plate. I always thought he was cooking for my heart, my stomach just got in the way.

Maury listened to this story and smiled. He told me how he’d cook for his wife and later their children, making omelets and pancakes in the morning, then oatmeal when his daughter hit her vegan phase. His wife passed away 5 years ago, and his children moved away. Now, he said, he’d perfected the meal for one. We talked all afternoon, lost in our comfy chairs, lost in each other’s stories.

Maury took my hand and raised it as if he was going to kiss it. Instead, he just held it, and said “Hannah, it’s been too long since you’ve had a real home cooked meal. Let me cook for you.”

I usually stick to the group meals here. Most of the residents here have small kitchens in their rooms, but I think I used my stove once, to make tea. I was not used to dinner for one, or two, for that matter. Yet there was something in Maury’s offer I could not refuse, especially when he told me his specialty, pot roast, just like my Henry.

Maury, still holding my hand, took me down the hall to his room, which was just doors way from mine. He hummed to himself while he cut potatoes and carrots and sliced steak. He put on some music, the classical station, and began conducting again, this time with one hand, as he used to other to pour wine into the pot.

The food was delectable, but bittersweet, the way that a taste of home makes you miss them a little bit less, before missing them a little bit more. I started to grow sad, and Maury noticed immediately, but he did not ask why, for he already knew.

“My wife, Mae, was sick for some time,” he began, “When she knew” — he did not have to what she knew — “she said, ‘I’m not going to tell you some fool advice like ‘love the way you loved me, because you won’t’. Maury paused, pain etched in his face, and resumed Mae’s words. “You’re too used to me, and I’m too used to you. But, when you have so much love left, you have to share it. It’s selfish not to, and Maury, you’re a stubborn old fool, but you’re not selfish.”

“She made me promise to hope,” he said. “She said there’d be music to hear, meals to taste, sunsets to see, and those are better shared.” So, that’s what I’m in for. To have one more shared song, one more shared meal, one more shared sunset, however many ‘one more’ the Lord allows me.

“Come”, he said, taking my hand and walking me to the terrace, “it’s getting dark soon, and you won’t want to miss this sunset.”

We have a lifetime before sunset, I thought, and many songs to hear. Once more, Maestro. Encore.

Encore, Love was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote, “You can’t go home again.”

We learn from the time we’re young that home is where the heart is. The word “Home” adorns throw pillows and needlepoint wall hangings, and is lauded in song. Home is not is not about location, but about environment. Home is where you feel loved. Home is where you feel accepted. Home is where you feel safe. Home is where you fit, not just for now, but where you’ll fit for life.

Growing up, my world was a quiet house on a quiet street in a quiet suburb in New York. We did not lock the door to our house at night, and did not have to look both ways before crossing the street.

The biggest danger plaguing my young world was the towering spruce tree in the corner of my parents’ front yard. Standing over 18 feet tall, it dwarfed everything: our house, the electric wires, and me, and it was just begging to be climbed, especially when the girl across the street, Jennifer, dared me to climb it. Jennifer was everything I was not: tall, athletic, daring, vivacious, pretty! When she said “climb!”, I asked, “how high?” I climbed as high as I could, moving from the thick, sturdy limbs at the tree’s base, to the sparser, thinner ones higher up. I wanted to be King of the Mountain! But Newton had other ideas (what comes up must come down), and I, as my mother later put it, “fell and went boom!” This would not be the last time I went out on a limb to impress a girl, and it would not be the last time I fell far and hard as a result.

Luckily I was only banged up. My mother put a Band-Aid on each cut, said “Kiss and make better!,” and it magically did feel better. It seemed there was no hurt that a Band-Aid and those magic words could not heal.

Of course, we learn too soon, parent and child alike, that there are some wounds that words and Band-Aids cannot heal.

By the time I was three years old, I’d had been hospitalized numerous times, for everything from multiple eye surgeries and a near-fatal allergy to anesthesia, to Reye’s Syndrome. By the time I was five, I was convinced that I was broken; defective; congenitally flawed. It cost my mother untold hours, weeks and years of worry, and ultimately cost her job. She had worked at a large record company as Head of Copyright, the youngest in the company’s history, before my illnesses forced her to resign. There was no family leave law then, only “come in to work, or stay with the sick kid, your choice”. I tried to make up for it by being good. Mom tried to make up for it by trying to save me from the world.

So, by the time kindergarten rolled around, my mother was not about to let me go in alone. To ensure I would not enter the Brave New World unprotected, my mother planned ahead: she’d come to school and sing for us. She marched me into class that first day, and, rather than seeing me off with a kiss goodbye, walked in, her 12-string Martin guitar in hand, and announced to the class that she would lead us in sing-alongs. She sang the classics — The Wheels on the Bus; John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt; Frere Jacques, and she added my personal favorite, Shell Silverstein’s “I’m Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor.”: I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor, I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, And I don’t like it one little bit.

The class giggled and clapped, and I felt proud and safe. Mom kept the good streak at school going by coming in monthly, and often brought homemade chocolates or cookies. “One for each hand!” she’d exclaim as she passed out two cookies to each child, as she always did for me at home.

I did not realize then how much my mother was sacrificing, just as she had her career years earlier.

My mother, like any parent, was someone’s child herself, someone in need of a parent’s nurturing, guidance, and care. But her mother, my grandmother, who had successfully battled a brain tumor when my mother was in her late teens, was now battling multiple myeloma. My mother’s days were spent running to and from Long Island Jewish Hospital. Looking back, I rarely saw Mom eat, and she was so thin and tired, so sick herself, that her doctor gave her a portable heart monitor. It was a black rectangle, no bigger than a Walkman, with a metal node on the back she’d hold up to her chest, and it would record her heart rhythm. She had to call a phone number at the end of the day, and hold the monitor up the phone. It would emit a long, shrill beep, laying out the beats and inner workings of her heart to a computer listening on the other end of the line.

I recalled that each time I was sick, or the times, later, when I was bullied at school, it would break that heart. I decided fairly early that the best protection I could give my mother’s heart was to shield her from injury to mine. So, I decided not tell my parents when things were rough. I’d not tell them if I’d been bullied, I’d not tell them of my first broken heart (though mothers always know) or any of the broken hearts that would follow.

I knew what the doctors did not. I knew what was wrong with my mother’s heart — an excess of empathy. I know, because I have the same gift/curse. If someone I care for is upset, I feel it viscerally, a physical sensation that something is off. How much pain can you watch your child go through before your heart breaks? What can a parent do, what is a parent, when a kiss can’t make it better?

Home is what you’d run into a fire to protect. It’s who you’d run into a fire to protect.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong. We grow up and leave our childhood houses, but we often never leave home, not in the sense that matters. Whether we move minutes, or miles or even oceans away, those connections, those things that make the heart swell or ache, remain. Even when we grow apart, they are always our parents, and we, always their children. As long as we draw breath, they remain home, regardless of where we live.

The Heart of a Mother was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.