SELECT ESSAYS
Conceptions, Chautauqua Literary Journal
“Her music and alto voice were the soundtrack for my growing limbic system, the part of me that was primed to hear which person in a room full of people was her. She had a bad stomachache after eating a forbidden stash of chocolate on Halloween night. She thought it was indigestion. I was born the next day. And that’s when the connection with her, the music, stopped. What happened next, I would discover, was similar to what happened to more than a million and a half babies born in America in the decades before Roe v. Wade.”
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Shifting Out of Neutral, Bethesda magazine
Over the years, I had come to love the classic simplicity of black, gray and beige. But do the colors we wear mean more than we think?
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Portrait in Nature and Nurture,
Brain, Child
On Mother’s Day, a writer discovers another mother and a past she never knew. An earlier version of this story appeared in Bethesda magazine and was awarded 2nd place for the 2011 American Society of Journalists & Authors’ Arlene Award for Articles that Make a Difference. (It also appears on my blog, Secret Sons & Daughters).
A Stranger in My Own Home:
Renovating Thoughts on Writing,
Bethesda magazine
When we signed the contract to remodel our home, I expected things like cooking on a rent-a-burner, lunchtimes looking at countertops and a daily battle with dust. But now, three weeks in to this three-month endeavor, I’ve discovered things I never anticipated; like how much I could feel like a stranger in my own home, and that I’d learn some-thing valuable about writing from the contractors.
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Torn Between Two Mothers,
Ladies’ Home Journal
Contact Christine for full text.
A Father Figure and the Outlines of Hope,
The Washington Post
I learned all about what a father could be when I met Gabby in the seventh grade. Her dad—a dead ringer for Yankees coach Joe Torre—had three daughters. He was home for dinner. He bought her a puppy and a pool. But more important, he listened to her middle-school travails, taught her about politics and met her for Saturday morning bagels throughout college. Gabby became my best friend, and her dad the first on my list of fathers I’ve admired from afar. Contact Christine for full text.