Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Tag: depression
Survival Varnish
It’s that time of the year when we start wearing hats in the house. And one of us starts wringing her hands in an effort, I think, to keep the blood circulating. Somehow, we have become philosophically opposed to turning on the heat before… Continue Reading “Survival Varnish”
Talk to Me
[Written six months before my first cochlear implant in 2015. Now, with the second implant on the horizon, I’m remembering how things were, how I’d created the world’s tiniest world.] I love my dogs more now that I’m going deaf. They’re not interested in… Continue Reading “Talk to Me”
My Mother
This is a picture of my mother in 1939, taken two months after giving birth to her first child, my big brother John. One wonders how she could be so slim and so stylish. Her expression tells me that she agreed to hold the… Continue Reading “My Mother”
99 New: Sustenance
My mother didn’t make pancakes. She made pancake. She would ask if I wanted her to make pancakes, but then she would produce a single pancake, a pancake the exact dimension of our cast iron frying pan. It was a thick, serious piece of… Continue Reading “99 New: Sustenance”
Writing Bleak
The problem with writing when you’re anxious or a little depressed is that everything ends up being about death – your own death, your spouse’s, your kids’, your dogs’, the death of the great American city, Death Be Not Proud, you get the idea.… Continue Reading “Writing Bleak”
Don’t Play on the Catapult
One thing I can tell you from my brief experience writing about catapults is that there are no decent pictures of catapults that truly depict the risk involved in messing around with one. The phrase “don’t play on the catapult” has been playing in… Continue Reading “Don’t Play on the Catapult”
Return
Disability depresses. It struck me today how deeply I sank into a chronic state of melancholia over the past few years. My ever-worsening hearing disability ate away at my optimism and tested my ability to right myself. I became an Emily Dickenson figure in blue jeans,… Continue Reading “Return”
Wishing for Monsters Under the Bed
I wish I had been less worried. If you ask me how I wish my childhood had been different, that would be my answer. I wish I had been less worried. It’s not a good thing for a child to be worried. Every day.… Continue Reading “Wishing for Monsters Under the Bed”
Inside Scoop
The trick to being happy is knowing how to manage unhappiness. I see all the blog posts, the lists of the ten things happy people do everyday, the five things happy people do before they wake up, the seventy secrets to happiness. I don’t… Continue Reading “Inside Scoop”
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
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