an old writer and his words

  • UNDER FOOT

    Okay, let’s get some things straight once and for all. I don’t live in a shoe. It’s a work of modern architecture, a quite normal if unusual looking home,, and if you imagine it shoe-like, so be it. I’m not old, I’m 45, but with eight kids I am prematurely gray. It wasn’t broth I…

    Lou Faber

  • PEKING

    Chi-Chi was a cute pekein a very “runt of the litter”sort of way, cuddly buthardly the show dogher breeders had intended.I asked why she was calledChi-Chi and my father searchedand showed me her AKCpapers, with the full namethat would’ve made thoseof Spanish royaltypause to consider the brevityof their seemingly endless names.She was a simple joy,…

    Lou Faber

  • ANCESTRY

    It shouldn’t be so easy to forgetwhere your ancestors came from, whythey left their homes, traveled toa new place where they might not be welcomedbut took the chance for a better future or justto avoid the horrors of where they were.It is a part of your DNA, yours werethe” other” then, but yours came and…

    Lou Faber

  • ON ITS HEAD

    Death has an uncanny knackfor turning normalcy on its head.My mother was never readyat the time my parents had to leaveeither selecting outfitsor jewelry, the right shoes,as my father stood by fidgetingand looking at his watch,knowing better than to say anything.Yet she left without notice,no delays at all, just suddenly goneso unlike her to make…

    Lou Faber

  • CONCEIVE OF THIS

    No child, no youthwants to imagine the momentof his or her conception.Now, that is the moment of personhoodin some places, a moment whentwo cells become one and isa life of its own, but it isn’tthe convergence of sperm and ovumwe avoid, but the act leading to it.When you are an adopteeand only later in life…

    Lou Faber

  • RADIOACTIVE

    I cannot say for certain which dayI became the familial isotope,but I know my parents beganaccreting neutrons not longafter their marriage, boundto their mutual core, unboundfrom me, adopted into the family,and I then became the isotopeof the family but remote,easily enough forgotten,when I was not present.That is, I suppose, one possiblefate for an isotope, it’s…

    Lou Faber

  • AND COUNTING

    How many timeshad they almost metover the years before that evening? What if the Fateshad allowed meetings,what would have changed?Likely everything, nothing,for when they might have metneither was available,he a student imagining himselfalready in love, or both marriednever thinking those relationshipswould possibly end in divorce. And how many times had theybeen in the same placeseparated…

    Lou Faber

  • SAINTS AND SINNERS

    I am a distant grandchildof saints and Herod,kings and lords, andVisigoths for good measure. That half of me iswoven of ever thinnerbranches on a treethat threatens to topplefrom the lightnessof its other side, rootsdeep in the rich soilof Lithuania, the rootshitting bedrock, andthe branches stuntedand there a simpleAshkenazi Jew.

    Lou Faber

  • GO TO YOUR ROOM

    When a petulant childacts out badly, a parentwill send the childto a corner, to his room,for a “time out”the duration of whichdepends on the child’soffense and demeanor. What are we to dowhen the child hasno parents, answersto no one, even his adultchildren, where can we,the observers go, whatcan we do except cringein horror knowing thischild…

    Lou Faber

  • GOOD RIDDANCE

    I still marvel at the waythe mind can rewritethe narrative arc of memories,taking away sharp edges,eroding or erasing sometoo painful to relive, andbringing others outfrom deep storage, somelargely forgotten, to bebattled with in dreams,demons wrestled to submission. In my dreams I have hada final conversation withmy step-sibling, whotold me of my father’sdeath in a text…

    Lou Faber