Jacquelyn Mitchard

I’ve never been seasick although I hear it is miserable – not at all a matter of “imagination” as some say. But recently I spent a good bit of time at sea being violently sick – although the sea had nothing to do with it. With my youngest daughter, I’d gone on this thrilling cruise,…

And now it begins. I’ve heard it before – and I’ll hear it again. After Joe Biden wisely (but gallantly) dropped his re-election bid, the presumptive Democratic nominee is Vice-President Kamala Harris. If elected, she would be the first Asian and African American president, and the first woman to be president. She is smart and…

Where I live is the sort-of birthplace of America, where the “shot heard round the world” was fired in the Revolutionary War. Thus, Massachusetts is a fireworks-loving (and of course, a fireworks-prohibiting) kind of place. Where I lived before, In Madison, Wisconsin, the annual July 4th festivity called Rhythm and Booms was a million-dollar community…

Recently, I sold some shoes. They were lovely, but they hurt – a kind of (very, as in $200) expensive leather ballet flat that I saved up for and purchased in the full knowledge that they would hurt me. They are advertised as the “eight-hour shoe.” This would pertain only if you were asleep with…

I don’t have many great friends, and of the four or five I do have, most of them live far away. Virginia Woolf once asked, apropos friendship, can you really call someone a best friend if you see that person only eight times each year? If I saw the people I consider my best friends…

Once I had a closet, and it was very swell. It was a walk-in closet with many hanging racks at various heights, and in the middle? A sort of carrel for all my shoes, and around the top of the shelves, places to store boxes and bags. I loved my closet as you might love…

Most people who lose their marbles don’t expect to. Most people who lose their marbles would, if asked, assure you that they would be the last people to lose their marbles. Many people who lose their marbles used to be fiercely smart. This is why I became so terrified when, the other day, I lost…

I would want to see a ghost. I think. It would depend on the mood – not of me, of the ghost. If this were a wistful spirit, even one with something left unfinished this side of the veil, that would be fine. If this were a spirit bent on vengeance, out to punish and…