parents
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Housesitting
When you arrived, you reached under the mat to pick up the keys in an envelope. Inside, a note on the kitchen counter said help yourself to anything in the pantry or fridge.
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Seven Almonds
The first thing my parents bought when they earned money in America was a giant bag of almonds as a talisman for success.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: There Will Be Blood
It is 1980, I am twelve years old, and there is so much blood.
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Changing the Subject
Does the time come for everyone when holding it in just won’t do anymore? I kept the story of my abortion to myself until Michael broke up with me two years later.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Julie Iromuanya
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Julie Iromuanya about her new book Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, writing an unlikeable main character, and worrying about your parents reading your finished book.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Elevator Ride
I was proud of living on unlucky 13 when some buildings on Park Avenue didn’t even have a 13. My luck changed when the new elevator man, Keith, arrived.
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Build-A-Bear
Other kids were just the grab-bag prize their parents were stuck with when they unwrapped it, whereas mine had gone shopping and picked me.
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Cheaters: A Life in Eyewear
When I was nine I faked a vision test to get a pair of pale pink cat eyed beauties. Because I wanted them.
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Inherited Fear
Perhaps I never was a brave person, but I know that I was bolstered by the fact that if something didn’t bother my mom, I didn’t need to be bothered by it either. Now, our anxieties have bubbled up at…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Praying Like Wild, An A-Z Trail Guide
Mallory McDuff uses the structure of an A-Z primer to explore the legacy left behind by her parents and her childhood in the Episcopal church.
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The Rumpus Interview with Elisa Albert
Elisa Albert discusses her new novel, After Birth, postpartum depression, childbearing, and the misogyny of modern medicine in pathologizing the normal processes of birth and the female body.
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Grant Snider considers New Year’s resolutions in his inimitable way. Then, Barbara Berman draws a connection between two recent poetry collections—famous German playwright Bertold Brecht’s posthumous Love Poems and The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume, edited by Jehanne…