Claire's Life

This weekend, I said goodbye to Grandma’s house. If my life were a TV show, my grandma’s house would be one of the permanent sets. I once wrote a description of the place for a school project, completely from memory, down to the worn paint on the creaky stairs connecting the kitchen to the basement. That basement – that drafty basement that still had Eisenhower-era concrete steps leading to the backyard – hosted twenty years’ worth of family Christmas Eve dinners. All fifteen cousins squeezed onto the same two benches at a long table until the oldest ones were bringing their wives along. Only hustlers who claimed the seats near the kitchen ever got a sip of soda – that is, hustlers and me, because I was the baby and my fourth-youngest cousin would hustle on my behalf. I had to go into that basement last December to try to find a tripped breaker in the fuse box, and I found a fire extinguisher that expired during the Reagan administration. I wasn’t surprised - it was that kind

Growing up, we always had neighbors. Our neighbors had spare keys to our house so they could get the kids off the bus if Mom was held up somewhere, come in to feed the cat when we were away, and come to our rescue when we managed to get the whole family, including the cat, trapped in the basement behind a door with a faulty latch. 1 In NYC, far fewer people have neighbors who will help out in emergencies, which can lead to some strange situations. The Scene: It’s 11PM on a Sunday evening. Sister is already sound asleep in what was once the living room. I am tucked up in bedroom #2, finishing a TV show before I fall asleep. The occupant of bedroom #1, hereinafter “Roomie,” was out with friends. A text appeared on my phone from an unknown contact: Are you awake? Just in case this was the opening line to a horror movie, I replied: Who is this? Rachel. Michelle is locked out. 2 Rachel is a friend of Sister’s, who lives in Harlem. Michelle is also a friend of Sister’s, wh

Here are some cool things to know about Hawaii:          Captain James Cook is credited as its first European visitor, having found it in 1778.          Its patron saint is St. Damien of Molokai, a Catholic missionary to a leper colony who died of leprosy after 16 years of caring for the sick with his bare hands.          Hawaii went from being a monarchy to a republic to a US territory in only five years (1893 – 1898), and then took another 60 years to become a state. Last but not least: yesterday it became the first state to successfully sue the US government over President Trump’s second travel ban. The case is still ongoing – and could well go up to SCOTUS – but a federal judge saw enough merit in the complaint to issue an injunction preventing the implementation of the order until it has been litigated. As someone who has been on tenterhooks about immigration policy since last October, I am very proud of Hawaii today. I am not an immigrant. I am, in fact,

I was four years old, and I missed a day of preschool. A little boy was crying and when the teacher asked him why, he said, “I miss Claire. I’m going to marry her!” The next day, I told him two things: we couldn’t get married until after college, and the reason I was out sick was that I had Reactive Airway Disease. I can still picture him sitting on a trike (which was inside the classroom, oddly), and thoughtfully saying, “If I had a disease, I would stay home from school.” That is the first memory I have of explaining one of my illnesses, and absolutely not the last. As far as I know, it was the last time any trikes were involved. [1] In the last twenty-six years I have been diagnosed with four separate, non-life-threatening, quality-of-life-altering chronic illnesses. First it was Reactive Airway Disease (a type of asthma) and the ever-present chance I would stop breathing. Next it was an anxiety disorder, possibly brought on by a lifetime of taking stimulants and wonder