1. Clam

Five months pregnant, in an animated phone call with my mother, while talking about my future daughter, Mom says, “Maybe she’ll become a famous author!”

Heat and shame course through my body. That’s my dream, I think, to become an author. And yes, I fantasize about fame, naively (and unconsciously) imagining it might make me feel safe, worthy, loved—whole.

I don’t yet understand legitimacy is what Mom, born out of wedlock, craves—and wants—for us all. I am too young to grasp that through her granddaughter’s imagined future successes, my mother might seek value in her own life.

Mom knows I am writing our family story—a project she ignited within me and has long encouraged. I’m dedicated to the project but have had few publications, and don’t consider myself a real writer.

I take her comment personally, assume the one being who has given me more than any other, the woman who has supported me in countless large and small ways, is snubbing my dream. 

I become a clam, tight inside my shell, sand chaffing soft flesh, while I try to produce my pearl.

Friction eats my tongue. I tell Mom I have to go, then slam the phone.

 

2. Harpy

Am I fooling myself? Is my hope a harpy? A mad woman bird of prey clawing her own arms and wings? Confused to have both, not knowing how to fly or hold a fork, talons the size of a grizzly’s, my beast awakened. Is silence my destiny and duty? Is my creative death as inevitable as my corporal one?

 

3. Spiders

I sat in Mom’s silky orb for twenty years, listening as she spun family yarn. True stories, yet also the tallest of tales. I clung to each gossamer thread, her spinnerets working faster than my brain.

Mom is an ardent researcher. She produces detailed family trees and translates diaries and letters from Italian and Spanish into English. She’s also our family glue, binding us to each other and to our Roman, Cuban, and Dad’s Jewish relatives. She assembles ancestral photo albums and saves tintypes, newspaper clippings, marriage and birth certificates, and passports—creating connections, webs, to our past.

“Someone should write a book about our remarkable family,” she says, handing me copies of her files.

I inherit her storytelling devotion. Still, in my eyes, she is a spellbinder, and I am a bore.

I weave stories in private, starting with my own, protecting solitude, which I need to examine our web.

It takes time to discover I won’t run out of thread, as long as I use it.

 

4. Mom’s Writing

 If being paid for writing in dollars or goods defines a writer, Mom is the scribe, not me. I benefited throughout my childhood from her adroit wordsmithing. She wrote acrostics and slogans for contests and won kitchen gadgets, a washing machine and dryer, a queen-sized mattress, a trip to Hawaii, and a 1965 (brand new) Mercury Montego.

She wrote persuasive letters to school. My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Harris, received a pithy little note from Mom that relieved me of writing I will not talk in class one-hundred times—an assignment she denounced as archaic, accomplishing “nothing but writer’s cramp and frustration.” She convinced my high school principal to waive my PE requirement because I danced four hours daily—a well-reasoned argument from a physical education teacher. And when the president of Aero Mexico—Mom ran a travel business on the side—invited me on a free trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, Mom successfully proclaimed in writing I’d learn more in that week of travel than at Syosset High School.

“Did you ever want to be a writer?” I ask Mom over the phone, wondering if she envied my dedication to the craft, even though she played cello with the Coral Springs Pops.

“No,” she says, pausing perhaps thirty seconds too long before adding, “Maybe in another life. I would have been very good at it.”

Years later, when she dies, I will scavenge the few (mostly blank) journals she left behind. Her travel diaries are narrative itineraries. We went here, ate there, did this, saw that.

 

5. Genes

After ruminating over Mom’s words all week, I work up the nerve to ask, “Why did you comment about my daughter becoming a famous author?”  

“Did I say that?” she asks. “I have no recollection of it.” She sips her coffee, then adds,

“Well, it’s in the genes—my father was a writer.”

What? Are you kidding? Are you blind, deaf, and dumb?

It’s true that my grandfather was a poet. Later, he earned his living as Editor-In-Chief of the Latin American desk at International News Service and United Press in New York City. He also wrote radio plays for Voice of America and published a book in Cuba.

Still, I want to scream Can’t you see what I’ve been doing these past years?

Instead, I say, “Oh,” retreating to my clamshell, drifting in murky water, jostled by movement and changes in light but unable to focus.

 

6. An Artist in the House

When I was fresh out of film school and writing a screenplay, Mom hosted an opera singer from Beijing in her home.

“You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to have an artist in the house!” Mom said.

I didn’t dare say, “I’m an artist.” It would have sounded absurd.

This was before I started working on the family story, which she encouraged me to write and publish. “I can’t wait to see the movie!” she half-joked, cheering me on. She was proud when I was a finalist for a screenwriting fellowship and bragged to her friends when I won an internship at Twentieth Century Fox.

I wonder if Mom’s artist comment reflects jealousy, or if she doesn’t think a screenwriter qualifies as an artist. Or if she doesn’t consider me a legitimate screenwriter because my work hasn’t been optioned, and I haven’t been paid.

These questions puzzle me, but in a soft corner deep inside my gut, my Artist Self knows who she is—whether my mother or anybody else sees her.

 

7. Messy Hair

My writer self is not the dutiful daughter. She’s neither quiet nor well-behaved. She refuses to prioritize words that maintain safety and support the status quo. She throws off her threadbare, people-pleasing cape and stands naked in broad daylight, a dissident in search of sanity, her writing, exorcisms. The braids her mother used to control her wild hair have been unraveled. The tangle is too great.

I’m afraid to be seen by my mother with messy hair.

I haven’t let Mom read my writing for years—longer than perhaps she anticipated or was reasonable. Is it any wonder she doesn’t see me as a writer? The blame I pinned on her belongs to me.

But also, creativity is a mercurial visitor, worth protecting.

 

8. Judgment

I mail a chapter of my novel to my sister Barbara. She reads it to our sister, Laura, who calls as soon as she hangs up with Barbara.

“You shouldn’t say these things about our family,” she warns me across the continent.

I’m making pancakes and flip over a bubbling flapjack.

“Shit!” I say.

“What?” Laura asks.

“Nothing. I just splattered pancake batter all over the stove. Anyway, Mom said it’s okay,” I say before cutting the conversation short.

I call Mom.

“Are you sure it’s okay to write about our family?” I ask.

“Absolutely,” she says.

“I’m afraid you’re going to hate my book,” I say. And me, I think.

“I’m sure I’ll run the gamut of emotions,” she tells me. “But don’t let that stop you. Keep going—don’t let what I might think interfere with your work.”

But the following week, she calls with a caveat: “Promise you won’t publish anything that might make things difficult with Ralph.”

“I promise,” I say, take a deep breath, and ask, “But how will I know?”

“I’ll be the judge,” she tells me.

I hang up, bile rising in my throat.

 

9. Cargo

I dream I’m storing my mom and stepfather’s old furniture and suitcases in my garage on shelves that overhang my Toyota Celica convertible. I want that space to store my journals, manuscript drafts, and research files. But I’m afraid to ask.

The shelves collapse, and Mom’s junk dumps into my open car.

Clearing the mess, I vow to tell Mom: I can’t continue to store your baggage.

I never utter these words out loud but spend decades sorting the wreck.

 

10. Looking Forward

Mom’s comment about my future daughter’s brilliant career notwithstanding, I give my unborn child’s aspirations zero thought—at this point, I couldn’t care less—unlike my desperate need to keep my harpies and clams at bay and continue my spider web life.

God help me weave as I raise two new women.

 

About the author:

Part of our Summer 2025 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through August 31, 2025.

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