Little Miss Universe

Growing up as the daughter of one of the last old-timers of Jewish background in our changing neighborhood was a recipe for years of feuding. Every summer brought a new generation of juvenile delinquents who posted up on the corner, drinking beer, getting high, and stirring up chaos. They vandalized property, broke into homes, and pushed boundaries just far enough to get away with it. Sometimes neighbors - the few who were still hanging on, including older Jewish women who remembered my father's local influence, would call on him for help dealing with the bad element. They remembered when his name carried weight, when his brief flicker of celebrity still meant something. But it was a losing battle. I remember crouching behind a tabletop hockey game box with my brother, shielding us from rocks that might come crashing through the window while we tried to watch TV. Those preteen years were some of the scariest of my life. One night, all the electricity went out- someone had yanked...

I don't know what drives a person to be a Michael Moore or young Howard Stern-someone who constantly throws himself into controversy to make change, to go down in history, to serve those who can't help themselves, because you truly believe in something, self sabotage, for money, or to get attention. Maybe all of the above. Howard Stern once said he threw himself into controversial arenas early on simply because he craved attention. But from what I'm told and can gather from photos and awards, my father at one time was having a perfectly good career as a radio personality in the early 1960s. The more controversial he became, the harder money was to come by. So I can't believe it was for the money. A reporter who'd had dealings with my father in his later years once told me an amusing anecdote about my father being quite enamored with his newfound Waterpik. That little story not only made me smile but brought to light a substantial memory for me. I remember my dad get...

I was sixteen when I watched my mother shoot and kill my father. I got caught in the crossfire-shot in the leg, the bullet nearly missing my kneecap.  Trauma takes many forms. A piece of mine-a bullet-still rests in my leg. The doctors figured leaving it in was less trouble than the alternative-a scar running up the back of my thigh that would make shorts season awkward. I received no therapy, no counseling, no help processing what happened...just a sixteen-year-old in a wheelchair, trying to make sense of what had just happened and what would come next. No matter how bad things are, they become your normal. And when that normal is ripped away in an instant, survival requires a kind of adaptability most adults don't have, let alone a teenager. In the days after, I asked myself endless questions-the kind that don't have answers but beg to be asked anyway. Did he know I'd wished him dead? Would he forgive me? Would he try to reach me, the way Houdini promised his wife he w...

This phrase scared the living daylights out of me every time I heard it. It was my mother's warning-code for when my father was about to lose it. I don't know how she always knew, but she did.   Maybe she'd become so accustomed to his mood swings that she could predict them like a monthly cycle.  Maybe she felt she had done something to provoke him. I'm not sure, but when there was an explosion, it was like living in hell. I can remember crying and saying, "God, please take me away from this," and wishing he was dead. I wanted the pain to go away so badly I could barely wait to get out on my own. Usually the target was my mother. He'd drag her down emotional rabbit holes, rehashing every past mistake, badgering her unmercifully. I remember the level of anxiety hitting me as a child-the fear, the anticipation of what to expect next. Would he break things? Would he become so angry and intense that he'd force her into humiliation? I remember one time ...

We just called it "Pennway Street." 5174 Pennway was where my father was born in December 1930, and where he would die fifty-two years later. It was the house my grandmother passed down to him, where he brought my mother as a young bride to live with his parents, where my brother and I grew up surrounded by intellectual brilliance and domestic chaos in equal measure. If those walls could talk, they would tell the story of a brilliant man's rise and fall, of a neighborhood's transformation from middle-class Jewish enclave to battleground, of a family that loved fiercely despite everything threatening to tear them apart. My grandmother's tastefully decorated 1940s home had fallen into disrepair and neglect, where her fine wallpaper had become part of the dirty, worn plaster walls. The original carpet lay flat with huge holes and black gummy stains throughout. Cigarette smoke had yellowed everything. In our bedrooms, my brother and I drew on the walls as our form of ...

Friendship and Feminine Wiles Some women online go off on full-blown male-hating rants, accusing others of “internalized misogyny,” but often miss the nuance. Not every questionable male behavior is part of a plot to keep women barefoot and pregnant. Sometimes, the guy just isn’t thinking that deep. Instead of stepping back and considering this, they label every action as a threat to feminism. And yes, the old debate is still going: can men and women truly be just friends? I know they can, because I've lived it. Are there nuances? Of course. But I've been lucky to have a best friend who happens to be male, straight, and married. We even joke he's more like a woman than a man with how he processes emotions. That said, he's told me more than once that if a man is looking at me, helping me, or striking up a conversation, it's because he wants to sleep with me. That infuriates me. Partly because, yeah, there's a little truth to it. I get that on a primal level, men ...

Where does our identity come from? Are our lives shaped by lessons we still need to learn? Are we experiencing a rebirth that may or may not connect to a past life? Does it have anything to do with our astrological chart, the placement of the planets at birth? Is our future driven by DNA? Are we preset with needs and desires based on genetic predisposition, inherited patterns, family constellations, ancestral echoes, or generational memory? We've all heard stories about long-lost siblings who meet and discover shared quirks, talents-even wardrobes. There’s research that backs this up: physical traits and personality behaviors can often be tied to our environment. Does The Apple Fall Far from the Tree? Digging for relics again, I found a letter tucked between old photos, one my mother wrote to my father just ten days before my brother was born. She was in Louisiana; he had apparently returned to Philadelphia. She was 19, pregnant, and clearly feeling insecure about their future. I...

Why I Write Writing, for me, feels like having a million tabs open on a browser-probably why I'm in a constant state of mental lockdown. Every time I sit down at my computer, it's like shaking a snow globe. Micro-memories swirl while I wait, sometimes anxiously, sometimes impatiently, for one piece to settle long enough for me to catch and put into words. Words I hope make what I've lived through interesting enough for someone else to keep reading. Each entry I write is inspired by something: a conversation I've had, an experience I've lived, or a line from a book. Those moments don’t just spark an idea-they unlock a memory waiting to be shared. It's time I stop downplaying the fact my thoughts matter. My experiences matter. But it's not just about me. One of my biggest regrets is not asking more questions about my family, my past-the details only my parents or their generation could've shared while they were still alive. Part of why I'm doing this n...

One of the reasons my mother went back to dancing in her 40s had nothing to do with chasing the spotlight. It wasn’t about unfinished dreams or reclaiming lost time. It was because we were broke. My father realized there was money to be made, and putting her back on stage could help. Plus, it didn’t hurt his ego to be connected to someone performing again. He’d never admit it, but it satisfied something in him-maybe even fueled his attempt to start a vaudeville show. We were on welfare for most of my childhood. My father’s politics leaned left. He was a staunch advocate of civil rights and free speech, seen as a socialist by some, always talking about the importance of looking out for the disenfranchised. He despised people like Anita Bryant, whose anti-LGBTQ campaign made his skin crawl. That stands out now because years later, when my brother came out as gay, he and my father stopped talking. My brother believed it was because of his sexuality. That tension hung in the air for years ...