Recently published by Story Circle Network and edited by Susan Schoch with a forward by Christina Baldwin, this anthology follows up where Living on COVID Time left off. Authors again contribute fiction and non-fiction essays and poetry, this time on the new normal.
Found under the section entitled “Finding Community” –“Some months back, my friend Clarissa gave me a small thread art piece with white edges around the side and a purple butterfly in the center. She had made it after hearing a family story I had both told her and written about in an essay. It meant a lot that she remembered its significance. It also strangely reminded me of thread art that had hung in my grandparents’ living room when I was small, something she couldn’t possibly have known about, unless she had filed it in her subconscious after seeing a picture of my cousin and me in front of it, legs dangling halfway to the floor. She seemed not to remember seeing the photo, at all.”
“The Hairbrush,”
Story Circle Network Blog, May 2021
“Chemical Fall”
“Daycare is Different Now”
&
“Sick Day”
Real Women Write: Living on COVID Time, Volume 19, 2020
“Flow Chart,”
Is It Hot in Here or Is IT Just Me?: Women Over Forty Write on Aging, Dec 2019
“Healthy Enough,”
Hashtag Queer: LGBTQ+ Creative Anthology, Volume 3, Aug. 2019
“The River is A Secret,”
Big Muddy 18.2, 2018
“The Dunking Booth,”
Crabfat Magazine, Oct 2017
“Butterflies,” bioStories Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2, Summer/Fall 2017
“Last Stop Nursing Home Tour,”
Sinister Wisdom 112: Moon and Cormorant, Spring 2019
"One Woman's Day" blog published May 31st on Story Circle Network.
“'We have to redo your hair' one of the women said.
I didn’t think there was anything especially wrong with my hair. My hair is fine and limp, yes, but it styled okay. And anyway, when in life is it okay for an adult woman to grab another adult woman, and insist on doing her hair? Had I gone all the way to Canada to be assaulted with a hairbrush?"
Published by Story Circle Network and edited by Susan Schoch, this anthology includes three selections written by Christina. Christina focuses her writing in each essay on an aspect of life during the COVID Pandemic.
"Chemical Fall" - In "Masks"
"Daycare is Different Now" - In "Parenting"
"Sick Day" - In "Fears"
"The first time I remember someone giving me grief about my period, I was eleven. I was standing in front of my sixth grade homeroom teacher's desk, asking if I could go to the restroom. She was reluctant. I stood there with my purse, shifting my weight."
"Iris and Magda had been friends for fifty years when the former sexually propositioned the latter. The last time Magda checked, the statute of limitations on fidelity was death. So far, Lucas was hanging on."
"Beyond the field is a river that sits like a secret, and mostly I am unaware that it is there, unless there is a flood. Once, one comes some yards from my grandparents' house, and I see a tiny mouse swim by my foot as I wonder how far the water will go."
"My grandfather once told me a story about a relative whose minister told her she had to be baptized twice. It seems that as the minister placed her under water, she lifted up an arm."
"Somewhere during a long conversation about how people were handling my grandmother’s decline and her loss of independence, Jen and I saw something flying toward us, lyrically in a rhythm all its own. It was a purple butterfly, the first I’d ever seen outside a butterfly habitat."
"Nothing says 'You're in a nursing home, and I'm not,' quite like driving up in a BMW SUV. I regret that, and I tried to explain it to the rental counter. But when they decide they want to upgrade you, there's no stopping them..."
“The Horse Dream and the Funeral,”
Rough Copy, 2008
“September Birthday Losses,”
Story Circle Journal, Sept. 2010
“Rewriting Cassandra,”
Northern Virginia Review, 2011
