Memory Bombs

Just when you think you've got it all buttoned up...

lauren@verbing.com — 2026-04-11T08:25:09-07:00

Now in my seventies, I'm in a good place; all that therapy, meditation, internal and interpersonal work has paid off. At last I can just relax and enjoy life!

That's what I was thinking when I got cancer.

You never know.

lauren@verbing.com — 2014-04-29T11:03:59-07:00

It used to be a happy memory.

What a bomb my brother dropped!

lauren@verbing.com — 2013-05-28T11:42:46-07:00

What a bomb my brother dropped! Just when you think you’ve heard everything...

How much did you really miss?

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-10-08T09:01:58-07:00

Oh, the blessed web! All those once-unanswerable questions that now can be: What would’ve happened if? How badly did I blow it? Thanks to the web, we can now find out.

How good is Cupid's aim?

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-09-05T08:46:23-07:00

Is love random? A beautiful stranger glimpsed across a crowded room, two ships passing in the night? Instead of a bow and arrow, does Cupid shoot a sawed-off six-gauge missing its sight?

Great oaks from little acorns grow

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-07-15T10:35:02-07:00

That actions have consequences is a central theme of Riding the Cyclone, but for many years, in my self-absorbed obliviousness, I had no idea what great oak had grown up right beside me.

Complicated grief

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-06-04T14:11:28-07:00

On Feb 11, 1968, in the midst of his presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy came to Putney School, where his daughter was a junior, to speak at our Sunday night meeting.

Your fondest wish isn't someone else's

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-05-14T13:22:10-07:00

If I could have any wish, I’d wish for someone to appear out of the blue, offering me a sheaf of old papers of my mother’s. Coincidentally, I’ve been able to do just that for two strangers.

Mother's Day

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-04-10T09:38:38-07:00

If, as Mother’s Day approaches, you’re one of the people not buying a card—well, this one’s for you:

What a fool I've been

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-03-21T10:55:46-07:00

I wrote this memoir in the spirit of a Holocaust survivor: after enduring such an ordeal, the need to bear witness is strong. This happened; the world must know.

It’s not as if I were going to learn anything from writing this book. No, surely after years of therapy, I’ve gleaned all possible lessons. It’s the world that needs educating, not me.

Or so I thought. But then, why was it so hard to write certain stories so that they made sense?

Dad filmed the maid. A lot.

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-02-21T10:08:23-08:00

I don’t remember her, not at all. But boy, does she get screen time!

Work with what you've got

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-02-01T08:34:54-08:00

“I’d like to write my memoirs, too,” an old friend told me. “Trouble is, I don’t remember anything!”

What is memory? Not just a recording

lauren@verbing.com — 2012-01-04T11:30:38-08:00

What is a memory, anyway? Is it like a photo or a video clip? When you remember the day your dad took you to the amusement park and you rode on the toy train, what’s going on inside your head?

Misremembering Herbert

lauren@verbing.com — 2011-12-07T13:01:10-08:00

The ending was so sad, I couldn’t bear it, so I’d start reading all over again at the beginning: so went the story I told myself for years—and anyone else who listened. Trouble is, the book has a happy ending.

A bullet I never knew I dodged

lauren@verbing.com — 2011-11-18T13:52:36-08:00

Before I wrote this book, I’d had rafts of therapy, hours and hours—some of it actually helpful. And I figured that the past was pretty much dealt with. I conceived of writing this book as a matter of getting it all down, in order (more or less), and then pruning the irrelevant bits.
Boy, was I wrong.