Memoirs: Participants Share Their Stories
The Love of My Life — Sabino Canon
For the past 60 years, Barbara Gallagher, 77, has cherished Sabino Canyon. She lives in Tucson, Arizona
Love can be between people, but today I only can write about love for a place. My place is Sabino Canyon in Tucson, Arizona. This is the place that has held me together through all of my loves because sometimes love is with you and sometimes love is a hurt that has left you.
Covid — A Teen Hits the Brick Wall
Bea Lantaff, 17, a Mariemont (Ohio) High School senior, joined us for an eight-week, 2023 summer workshop at The Barn.
When I hear the word, I hear her voice. I smell the hand soap I used at the time she passed. I taste those cherry- flavored Sweetart ropes from all the six-hour car rides from Cincinnati to Evansville, Ind.
Covid had its impact on many. But it didn’t just impact me. It hit me like a brick wall.
Covid-19 and Me
Dave Owens, Attorney
San Ramon, California
The most positive thing about the Pandemic is that I’ve had time alone with my thoughts. That’s also the worst thing. It’s good in the sense that I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the end of my 17-year relationship with my wife, understand the ramifications of my childhood, all that fun stuff.
But… it also allows my mind to wander, to go to dark places, to engage in all or nothing thinking (as they call it in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.) Sometimes the CBT, as they call it, doesn’t work like in the books and you can feel hopeless, in despair. It doesn’t help when you step outside the house in the middle of a Pandemic and the California skies are orange from forest fires. You can’t help but feel like you’re living in a post-apocalyptic movie sometimes.
Bye Bye to The River Nile
Yasmine El Baggari, Founder & CEO l Voyaj Morocco
I had just arrived to the Nile in ancient Luxor, Egypt, after spending a few days in Cairo for the Women Economic Forum. . . . That same evening, as we arrived, the world had begun to shift with the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hands off! Covid-19 Terror & the Hurt Kid
Jordan Edelheit, Jerusalem, Israel
The kids can’t be more than 6 and 8 years old. Scooters upright, helmets ready and a sliding slope sidewalk made to impress.
And that’s when it happened, a misplaced pebble . . . .
Stone Free
Ben Shaberman, Senior Director, Scientific Outreach, Foundation Fighting Blindness, Washington, D.C.
My parents were divorced when I was two, and moving forward, I lived with my mom. . . .When I was a junior in high school, my dad made an enticing offer: Move to Miami to live with him. I could escape from Cleveland winters living with my flighty mom and grumpy grandfather in a shitty little two bedroom condo.
I Skipped My Senior Prom to Tour a Concentration Camp in Poland
Ruthie Myers, Cincinnati Hillel
When I was 17, I was meant to go on a trip called March of the Living. March of the Living, or “March” for short, is an international organization and the name of its two-week long trip to Poland, then Israel.
The Best Thing about the Covid-19 Pandemic
Scot Krumbein, Chicago Real Estate Leasing
I think the greatest thing to come from Covid has been spending more time with my sister. When I lived in Taipei I went on many adventures. But towards the end of my year there I realized how much I missed my family.
House Charm
Alice O’Dell — Upper School English Teacher, The Summit Country Day School, Cincinnati, Ohio
The moment she gives me the charm a fluttering idea settles—I own my own house. The charm is a silver house about the size of a sugar cube, green and red enamel on one side with a tiny heart that fills the front door. My real house is not so symmetrical, not so colorful—but small and charming and full of heart.
What Not To Wear
Tom Gelwicks, Cincinnati Attorney
I’m standing in my underwear before my closet. What do I wear to a writing workshop with folks I’ve never met? Dressy slacks with my $250 soft-leather loafers? They’ll know I’m to be taken seriously. No, pretentious.
When I Felt One Way and Acted Another
Elisabeth Johnson, Teacher
It is here the concrete skins a hole in my jeans and a gash on my right calf. No one saw except Joe as he approached from the south …. We met there on that spot where the sidewalks meet, as if we were sidewalks ourselves.
I didn’t like him. But I walked nightly through those paths to the southmost dorm. He walked sometimes north to my dorm, and we sat beneath the twinkle lit window in my bedroom. All of this began because he reminded me I had to clean the cut on my leg.
My Love — An Adoption Memoir
Rabbi Elena Stein, Cincinnati
I had no doubt that I would love my child. I sometimes tell my daughter Dahlia that I loved her even before she was born. She says, “but you didn’t even meet me until I was almost two years old.” Which is true. But nevertheless.
Lady Luck
Steve Kemme, Cincinnati Journalist
As a young man, I had no burning desire to get married. In fact, I consciously avoided it. During one period in my 20s, I made a rule never to go out with someone two weekends in a row. The purpose was to safeguard myself from falling in love and getting married.
Restoration
Barbara L. Morgenstern, Esq., Memoir Writing LLC Founder
What do you do with yourself when your best friend of 40-some years up and dies on you, felled by a blood clot storm after celebrating Fourth of July? My instinct was to try to find comfort in routine. So I decided to hand wash my bras in the kitchen sink.
Up, Up and Away . . . and I Didn’t Die
Dr. Jean Dye, Retired College Professor
One day I met a young man who owned his own Piper Cub plane. In time, he invited me to go for a spin. I had never flown in a plane of any kind, and the idea of getting into a little plane was terrifying. But I also grew up with four brothers and had spent a lot of my life accepting dares from them and trying to keep up with their adventures. So I eventually accepted the challenge to fly.
My Unlikely Savior
Lowanne E. Jones — Associate Professor Emerita & Former Head, Romance Languages and Literature, University of Cincinnati
(Names changed to protect the not-so-innocent) Janice Kane, my roommate during the second semester of my freshman year at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, liked to describe herself as “150 pounds of Fighting Blonde.”
Covid Craziness & a Terrifying Trip to the ER
Ann Serafin, — Chicago, Freelance TV News Producer, Six-time Emmy Award Winner
We were driving across the country, returning home to Chicago after an unexpected extra three months in Arizona under early-Covid quarantine. . . . We were in that “vulnerable” population in age and circumstance, afraid if we touched the wrong doorknob, death might be around the corner.