Literary Mama
Ona’s archived column in Literary Mama, an online magazine about the many faces of motherhood
“Teenagers, after all, are still kids. They may be tall, opinionated, even bossy kids, but they’re kids. Still in need of us. Still ours. Not that this magically changes with the turning of a calendar page, but. . . . But what? That’s it. I’m not sure how to finish the sentence because, once my kid is no longer a kid, I’m not quite sure what my role will be.”
Excerpt from “And Now the Boy is 20”
“As shocking as all this was, on some level, I’d actually always known. I’d heard Steve slip and say Mom; I’d seen my mom pore over Tina’s letters, then quickly tuck them in her apron pocket when she noticed I was in the room. I was simply adept at explaining these moments away to myself. Not wanting to believe my parents would lie to me, I collaborated with them.”
Excerpt from “What Lies Beneath”
You’re My Mom. I Love You. But That Doesn’t Mean I Want to Hang Out With You.
December 2010
“With no family near me back home, I sometimes find myself feeling waif-like and unmoored. But here I marveled at faces that seemed both new to me and completely familiar. I hugged bodies that my own body knew in a deep, rarely tapped place.”
Excerpt from “Something Old / Something New”
“She showed up at the train station in Philadelphia a few months back, her thick black braids wound into a crown at the top of her head, her expression direct and stern. There were beads of blood above the neckline of her blouse from her necklace of thorns.”
Excerpt from “Frida and Me”
“Before there was Ethan, there was the imagined child, her cells already multiplying inside me when I was still small myself. While I served Playdough spaghetti on plastic plates with the stiff body of a baby doll in my lap, she grew hands and hair and eyes.”
Excerpt from “The Imagined Child”
“For once, I didn’t want to “pass” as an able-bodied person. I wanted to be looked at squarely, limitations and all. I wanted to look at myself that way.”
Excerpt from “Doing it Differently”