As I walked into the ballroom of the DoubleTree Hotel in Somerset, NJ, I thought to myself, Is this all there is? Surely this dimly lit room, with its tacky maroon-and-cream geometric-print carpeting and a paltry expanse of parquet flooring for a stage could not have been the competition sphere that my classmates had talked up for months. Surely these three disinterested-looking middle-aged men and women sitting in front of that parquet floor could not…
A few months ago, I kissed my grandfather’s rough-shaven face, told him I loved him, and walked out of his hospital room. I knew I probably wouldn’t see him again, even though the doctor said he might have a few more months to live. My husband and I live with our two small children in central Virginia, and my grandparents live in southern Ohio, about seven hours across the mountains. I saw him a few hours…
On May 25, 2015, the night before my husband’s forty-second birthday, he was watching the Houston Rockets beat the Golden State Warriors at a local bar. It was raining. My daughter and I were already home, waiting for him to return after the game. She was eight and had school the next day, so after she went to bed, I texted my husband for an update on his whereabouts. The rain had turned into a…
Ester Bloom's previous work for The Toast can be found here. She also dispenses wit and wisdom as Aunt Acid, The Toast's advice columnist. Pregnancy is like going through puberty again, only in fast-forward: your body, without seeking your consent, becomes cartoonishly, attention-grabbingly feminine. And I was sub-par at going through puberty the first time around. When I was almost 12, I auditioned for a suburban summer camp production of Into the Woods and…
Go to support groups. Sit in circles and think about how much you fucking hate support groups. Listen to people cry for their own ill family members. Feel your chest tighten with anger toward them, toward their raw displays of sadness, their easy tears. Fantasize about screaming, one long, terrifying scream like your brother’s screams, the ones that summon cops and ambulances and nervous neighbors who pretend to be working inside their garages, who pretend…
I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth? - Louise Gluck, excerpt from Persephone, the Wanderer Spring 2014 The thing about spring is it always comes quick and unexpected. It rolls in thick and heavy like northwestern fog. All of a sudden it is everywhere. Two weeks ago it was winter and bleak. It will still…
Your father comes outside only to tell you that the orchard has closed. He finds you in the backyard, drifting through the pool on a half-deflated float and finally finishing Franny and Zooey. There is little else to do when you come home to visit your parents; it’s also probably time for you to return the waterlogged paperback to your friend, as she sent it to you in the mail two years ago. You have…
The Toast will be running a few pieces on Canada's missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW) this summer; this is the first.
My seven siblings and I grew up in a Christian household, which was strict in some sense. We didn’t own a television, and we sat around the table to read The Bible every night and recited scripture. My sisters and I couldn’t wear pants or cut our hair. It might
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mallory for having bought my kids this book two years ago. It is literally the greatest book for babies ever, and there are only a few left in stock so GET ON A WAITING LIST OR SOMETHING. I will now explain why it is so perfect. Then you can tell me what YOU buy for babies.
My mission is to find a photograph of all seven of us; my six siblings and myself, alone. Well; alone, together. My publisher thinks this would make a great frontispiece for my debut memoir, also known as the story of why my biological siblings and I were split up as children and how we found one another again as adults. I know, even as I respond to this request with a number of exclamation points, that…
If you were to look at me now and knew nothing of my history, you would never believe I’ve ever been overweight. You would assume that I have no intimate knowledge with the struggles many women experience trying to attain and keep their ideal weight. But my appearance is misleading.
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I’m on a diet. I’m always on a diet. I’ve spent a great deal of my life since the age of 14…
Mary J. Breen's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
I recently came across the box of my mother’s old photos in the attic, as I do every so often when I’m searching for something else. And as I always do, I brought them downstairs. I barely had the box open before I started to feel unsettled, and an old and urgent little voice started telling
It was always hard for me to watch things like this with you. You overreacted to everything on the news. I hated that about you. Every storm, every wildfire, every random shooting, every nighttime strangler, you acted as if seeing them on the news would somehow magically make them show up at our apartment door. You issued nonsensical warnings like “Be careful out there. They’re
I remember as a kid hurtling onto my parents’ bed to watch Sweet Dreams, the Patsy Cline biopic. I wasn’t yet ten, but I knew the music in my veins. On sleepy afternoons, those were the songs that stirred my mother to romance the vacuum cleaner as she swayed through the living room with half-closed eyes, and those were the songs which first conveyed to me the purchase of longing over logic because when you…
