I recently gave a friend her first taste of matzoh. "It tastes like saltines without the salt."
Today I made matzoh brei, which is essentially scrambled eggs incorporating matzoh softened in water, for Iggy and his brother, Eggy. It’s one of the treats of Passover.
Pale pink lace dress
covered your
cancer-ridden body,
but it couldn’t blot out
your worries at my wedding.
Chemotherapy wracked
your body,
leaving you too tired
to cook or clean,
two staples of your life.
You were always a looker,
with a tall, slender model’s body.
So hard for you when
drugs bloated your body,
but they also erased your wrinkles.
You took pleasure where you could.
In The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick says that a good essay requires "self-implication." In other words, "To see one’s part in the situation — that is, one’s frightened or cowardly or self-deceived part — is to create the dynamic," pp. 35-36. It seems to mean revealing one’s weaknesses in the essay.
Gornick demonstrates this concretely in her analysis of three essays. I can see her point, but I don’t want to follow her advice. I guess that’s a sign that I haven’t come to terms with my weaknesses. It could be cathartic to talk about them, but I’m not ready to go there.
This is a big issue with my "Don’t Play with Matches" essay. I wish I could push out unagonized essays like The Dowager and PTCakes.