“Driving Us Potty: When to Accept that the Training is Not Working” by Erica Barlow

Potty training. So . . .

Why Grief Counseling? by Lucinda Weatherby

In Lucinda Weatherby’s powerful memoir, Five Hours: How My Son’s Brief Life Changed Everything, the tragic loss of her son inspired Weatherby to build upon her experience and become a grief counselor. We asked her to tell us a little more about how she came to make this courageous decision.

“Sister-in-Law” by Louisa Ermelino (from Staten Island Noir)

Get in the car.

I started to turn but there was a gun in my back or something pretending to be a gun. I faced forward. The voice was familiar, a woman’s voice, a cigarette voice. Philip Morris unfiltered. I think that’s the only way Philip Morris comes. Smoking them was a grand statement, too big for me, but if I was right about the voice then we’d shared a few together, she and I . . .

Excerpt from Every Boy Should Have a Man

He was not unusual because he had a man. In those days every boy had a man or wanted one. He was not unusual because he had a man that talked. With the boom in mining and the approaching war, they were breeding more talking mans, and many boys—at least those born to well-to-do families—had […]

“Party Pooper” by Janine Annett

Potty training is a bitch.
 It should be easy, right? How hard could it actually be? . . .

“Mother Seeks Connection” by Kevin Holohan

Deirdre stares around her at shelf after shelf of cell phones, earpieces, cell phone covers, holsters, and some strange metallic screen things she cannot explain. She rarely comes into town anymore and it took her twenty minutes to find the mall and fifteen more to find a parking space. She is still wearing her apron and only now notices it. She tears it off and unsuccessfully tries to cram it into her coat pocket on top of her car keys. She stuffs it under the display of luminous cell phone cases . . .

“Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck” by Nkosi Ife Bandele

And so my nine-year-old discovered the word the other day. On the subway: a young woman, thoroughly exasperated by her fellow rude subway riders . . .

“The Junkie Incident” by Robert Burke Warren

It was a normal stay-at-home dad day for me. I was chatting with tall, thirty-something Dominique, broad-shouldered in a sundress, big hands like fluttering pigeons. She was paying her daughter’s college tuition by watching a pair of three-year-old twin boys whose parents sold antiques in the West Village. Dominique held my attention and that of a couple of moms—Juliet, a single bartender, and Sage, an erstwhile graphic designer whose husband renovated brownstones. They each had a toddler. As usual, I was the only dad in the park. But caregiver-ship trumped gender. I was, essentially, one of the gals . . .