My ambition to live in the United States comes from my childhood. Many reasons forced people to change their home. In my case, nothing pushed me to leave home. People often ask me why I chose America and a U.S. citizen as my husband. I simply answer that I fell in love with my husband, […]

I was born and grew up in Congo-Brazzaville, a country located in Central Africa. It has been three years since I have left my country in difficult conditions. I had to move for safety reasons and, I am currently living peacefully in the United States. I always remember that day of October 24, 2015 standing […]

When I was a young child, my parents brought home a Moosehead furniture-made, dark maple, dining room table with eight matching chairs. The glossy wood table was beautiful and there were two leaves to add more room for more people as needed. For you see, in my family, dinner was the most important meal of […]

It was two o’clock in the morning and I was tired, lonely. I was supposed to be staying in a Washington D.C. hostel that had bedbugs the size of cats, but in the middle of a humid night, I figured I’d be more comfortable waiting for my 4:30 a.m. train in a cracked, plastic chair […]

“When winter comes, with frosty flowers on the pane, The thought of you will warm our hearts, ‘Til we return here once again.” These are the last lines of our most revered summer camp song, “By a Glistening Lake.” It was sung through sobs on the last night of camp, at what was called the […]

I had recently moved back home to Brunswick from Rochester, New York after a recent divorce. My father had kindly volunteered to drive with me back to Rochester to help me gather up the rest of my belongings. My husband and I were quite civil dividing up the last of our things and packing them […]

The trip was to visit family. The ride home from these visits has assumed a form of ritual for me. Easy highway driving allows me time and space to put myself back together. I stop in Portsmouth, a beautiful little city to unwind in. What I do depends on where I find a parking place. […]

It was February 2, 1972 and I was heading home to Las Vegas, driving my Dodge van at night through the dark, winding canyon of the Virgin River Gorge. It was late, almost midnight, and I was coming home from college in Utah. Snow was on the ground, eerily illuminated by a full moon that […]

We dashed from our berths in the bowels of the boat to the main deck. My mother held my brother in one arm while I grabbed onto her dress. All dependents were told to get on deck near their assigned life boats. Lots of words were spoken over the PA system. One of those words […]

My husband gets up around 4 a.m. to go lobstering on days that the weather allows. By 5 o’clock, he’s down at the boat and headed out of the cove, well before I’m getting out of bed and getting the kids ready for school. Once the kids are off, I head to work myself. I […]