Tag Archives: Family

The Cousins Lunch

Posted on June 19, 2018 by

“Let me get this straight,” said my husband as he dropped me off at our local Metro station. “You’re going to New York to meet a guy you met on the internet?” We laughed. What he said was literally true, … Continue reading →

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The Message in the Laundry

Posted on June 7, 2018 by

One day in 1944 my future existence hung by a tenuous thread. If a message secreted in a batch of laundry had not reached its intended recipient I would never have been born. On such tiny twists of fate and … Continue reading →

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A Funeral and a Turf War

Posted on April 19, 2018 by

The newspaper clipping is yellowed with age but carefully folded and preserved in a box of papers left by my Irish grandmother. The box was inside a larger one with an assortment of family papers that sat in the back … Continue reading →

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The Mobsters and the Baby Shoes

Posted on April 7, 2018 by

Back in the early 1970s my sister Angela worked for a temp agency in the East London suburbs of Essex. Her first assignment was with a company named Downy Baby Shoes. She imagined an office where grandmotherly women sewed baby … Continue reading →

Posted in Dispatches | Tagged , | 6 Comments