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Jul 10, 2024 | 
short-reads.org | Mark Hendrickson |Amie McGraham |Hanna du Plessis |Kate Lewis
Kate Lewis — 3 min read Later, you will marvel at all the things you believed were important. The white milk instead of the chocolate, the crisp apples instead of the fries. The towels and the flip-flops by the pool. You will lay out those towels by the pool with precision, stretching the worn striped terry cloth across the stark metal frames of the deck chairs.
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Jan 12, 2024 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
karma chameleon: a ten-act playmorningpagemashup.substack.com
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Jan 12, 2024 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
I: Age 8. I’m a writer. Mystery stories. II: First drink. I’m 11. To fit in? Be a grownup? Because I like the effect. III: 3 high schools. National Honor Society. My friends: stoners, jocks, French club. IV: College. Lawyer? Journalist? English Prof? Drop out. V: Career. Ad agency. Political campaigns. PR firm. Dental Insurance? Dental insurance. VI: Sober. I’m a marathoner. College graduate. VP of Sales. I’m sober. VII: “Retired.” I’m a family caregiver. A petsitter. Exhausted. VIII: Writer. Blogger. Published author.
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Dec 22, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
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Dec 22, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
Christmastime. The old house, bedecked in holiday attire. The air scented with spruce and winterberry, candles in every window. The felt snowmen my mother stitched hanging on the scraggly tree. My father’s childhood miniature village, hand-carved and splintery, lining window ledges. On the hearth, three woolen socks waiting to be filled, their mates long since lost. We had snow, then, it always snowed, and we were shoveling, always shoveling. The snowbanks up to our knees.
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Dec 8, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
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Dec 8, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
They arrived in December. The first, early in the month. The other, after Christmas. She’d forgotten to wrap them but it’s not as if I didn’t know what they were; my mother had mailed me one every year for the thirty years I’d lived out west. The annual “Around the Harbor” calendar in all its technicolor glory. Glamour shots of Boothbay Harbor, outlying islands, sailboats and lighthouses, photographed by the region’s resident shutterbug. My mother dated the photographer the year after my father left.
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Dec 1, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
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Dec 1, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
Amesbury, Massachusetts. My parents’ first house. A place I’ve never seen. My parents are gone, the house is gone and yet I know it well. The objects tell the story. The basket, hand-woven, where the first gray cat slept—they were always gray, my mother’s cats; they were always named Perky. The andirons, soldiers of the Revolution, now occupying my own hearth. The wooden chest, hand-carved from Sherwood Forest where my ancestors once lived. The antique clock that struck thirty-seven at midnight.
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Nov 17, 2023 | 
morningpagemashup.substack.com | Amie McGraham
Playing house in a rented mobile home. Dark paneling. The hallway, a tunnel. The odor of thousand Marlboros embedded in the variegated brown shag carpet. My kitchen the only bright spot: copper-bottomed pans, Corningware, a percolator. And the Lucite recipe card file: a wedding gift from my new mother-in-law. Chex mix and coffee cake. Every other recipe a casserole. Creamed soups, noodles and jello molds. After Thanksgiving, she’d brought a casserole fashioned from leftover turkey and broccoli.
