This Wednesday I am going to San Francisco to read from my essay in the new anthology, He Said What? Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed, edited by Victoria Zackheim. I am so proud to be one of the contributing authors in this anthology. The other women's stories are compelling, riveting, humorous, and poignant. I feel like the new kid on the block; all the other authors are well-established in their niche. I am just beginning my writer's journey and am humbled to be amongst such strong company.
The brother I wrote about in Brotherly Love is coming with me to San Francisco. I feel blessed to have him in my life. That he is still alive and relatively healthy is more than I could have wished for twenty years ago. Living through the AIDS crisis in the eighties was horrific for him - not only because of all the friends and acquaintances he lost, but because of the fear he lived with for his own life.
I cna't say why my brother's life was spared, why he didn't die from the same hideous infection that so many other equally wonderful people did. They say there are only two prayers to say. One is Please; the other is Thank You. For so many years I choked on my prayers begging for my brother's life to be spared. And now I am filled with awe and gratitude as I bow in my prayer of thanks.