Excerpt: This is a little short story I drafted a while ago about a mother/adolescent-daughter relationship. It's fiction, but like all fiction, there's a bit of autobiographical truth to it, too. It's all about how hard it is, especially within families (where we get so stuck within our own shared histories, neuroses, and mistakes) to learn, instead, to love, listen, accept, grow, change, forgive, and stay in the present moment.... Here's the beginning of the story: "I search her face across the table for its usual reassuring perfections, but the comforting illusion of Claire the Exquisite eludes me today. She's talking warily--but at least she's talking, that's good. So often we don't talk at all. Such a tiff in the car on the way over here, about nothing. And then we both laughed at that sign announcing "Reliable Junk"--our own private shared brand of hilarity. We laugh at all the same things. Why waste even a minute picking at each other?"   more »