{"id":3147,"date":"2023-12-02T00:08:33","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T00:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=3147"},"modified":"2023-12-03T21:25:43","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T21:25:43","slug":"my-husband-her-son-by-lisa-k-harris","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/my-husband-her-son-by-lisa-k-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"“My Husband, Her Son” by Lisa K. Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\tAt our fifth winery, my arm extends across an empty seat. The raised nose of my terrier Lola sniffs the plate of Cheetos cheese puffs I offer my eighty-seven-year-old former mother-in-law, Judith. She chooses one. Munching, we bob our heads to Mrs. Robinson<\/em>. Florescent orange dusts her lips.\n\tDaughter Lyda, Judith\u2019s granddaughter and only descendant, the chair\u2019s absent tenant, eyes me as she leans against the bar counter. \n\tI smile, Judith and I peachy-keen without Lyda sitting in between.\n\tLyda turns her back to us and negotiates another pour into goblets. \n\tThe glasses are plastic and covered with sayings in pastel cursive: Good Times with My Sis, Best Friends, BFF! <\/em>The winery, known for The Fluffer, Rise Up<\/em>, and O<\/em> reds pared with Cheetos and chips, is packed. Other revelers, mostly women, ooh and aah over our glasses, ask where they are from (discount store), say how cute, with a nod to one another, motions I interpret as why can\u2019t they be like us<\/em>, a three-generational family and begging dog, bonding in the midst of rolling southern Arizona grasslands speckled with scruffy cattle and senescent vineyards?\n\tWe are<\/em> saccharine sweet. Maybe it\u2019s because we nibbled our way through a picnic basket brimming with goat cheese, rice crackers, gherkins, chili-jam, and chocolate-covered mangos, and sipped twenty-five two-ounce pours. Maybe, like the ranchers looking skyward to low-hanging pewter clouds, seeking deliverance for a drought-parched range, we thirst for what might have been. \n\tTwo days ago, as Judith walked through our front door for Christmas Eve dinner, she said the dog was fat. Lyda defended the dog and my honor, since I feed Lola. The two proffered the terrier\u2019s girth, proportion of body to spindly legs, and waddle, each spinning their version of truth. That\u2019s a trait we share: the need to be right. With PhDs after each of our names, we hammer home ideals. Though the fat-shaming was tame, I cut Lola\u2019s rations. \n\tTwenty-six years ago, when Lyda was two, Judith sought court-mandated visitation every other month, never mind that she wasn\u2019t a parent and lived three thousand miles away. Perhaps in her mind she was a stand-in, as Peter\u2014my husband, her son\u2014had died a few months earlier. Diagnosis to death had been swift, six weeks, hardly enough time to learn to pronounce metastasized adenocarcinoma. At age thirty-three, he left a gap wider than the winery\u2019s metal chair between two women who had difficulty speaking to one another.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\nAugust 24, 1994\n\nDear Judith:\nI'm saddened that you are seeking mediation. Peter hasn\u2019t been dead one year, and we are just settling into our new relationship. I believe that your initiation for court-ordered mediation is a drastic step to take before we have spoken directly. It doesn't seem logical to begin a formal process before we have discussed the matter. As I expressed last month when we met, and in an earlier letter, this period is very difficult, as both my wedding anniversary and the anniversary of Peter's diagnosis coincide next week. \n\nI don't believe that your initiation of this process is being undertaken in \"the spirit of love\" as you state. Instead, I feel that you are trying to cause me mental anguish and making an already difficult situation harder. This action does not help me in the \"healing process\", as you propose, on the contrary, it compounds the situation. I wish you would give things a chance to work out between us.  \n\nLisa\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\u201cThis is Lisa.\u201d Judith introduced me to Aunt Helen, Peter\u2019s great-aunt. I was nineteen, between my sophomore and junior years at college, where Peter and I had met.\n\tThe family matriarch stood in the screened porch of the communal dining room. We had traveled all day, from Long Island\u2019s tip to New Hampshire\u2019s wilds to reach this socialist summer camp, Peter at the wheel, Judith in the passenger seat, and me stuffed in the back of an Accord hatchback, the two of them eager to escape The City. \n\tIt was my first time to the East Coast, to a socialist camp, and to The City. Peter\u2019s foot had been heavy on the Accord\u2019s accelerator; he couldn\u2019t wait for them to fall in love with me as much as he had. We arrived as the dinner triangle clanged.\n\t \u201cShe\u2019s not Jewish.\u201d Helen gave Peter a once-over and settled her gaze onto Judith, perhaps expecting further explanation. \u201cYou\u2019re late. Said you\u2019d be here an hour ago.\u201d\n\t\u201cLet me help you to a chair, Helen,\u201d Judith said. \u201cTraffic. Peetie, get Aunt Helen a Scotch.\u201d\n\tAs if a stiff drink would ease the pain of my ethnicity.\n\t So passed four days. Judith at Aunt Helen\u2019s beck and call, with \u201cPeetie\u201d as back-up. We escaped \u2018get this, get that\u2019 by canoeing the lake. I reveled in the calls of magical loons and the Aurora Borealis. From the porch one afternoon I overheard Judith tell Peter, \u201cShe\u2019s Midwestern. Ignorant. There\u2019s no substance there.\u201d  \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\tWhich is why he married me. I was a foreigner: on a first-name basis with a manicurist, lived in a two-story house at the end of wooded cul-da-sac with a lapdog and a Cadillac Coupe de Ville in the garage. The youngest child (my siblings would use \u2018spoiled\u2019 here) of Nixon-supporting parents. Peter, the only child of a Birkenstock-wearing single mother. He didn\u2019t know his dad\u2019s name, grew up in Brooklyn, marched in civil-rights and anti-Vietnam protests, and attended an alternative high school where he played chess all day.      \n\tAfter we married, Judith was the poster child for meddling mothers-in-law.\n\t\u201cThis lasagna is inedible,\u201d with a spit into a napkin.\n\t\u201cWhy did you buy this house?\u201d \n\t\u201cI can\u2019t believe you don\u2019t know that.\u201d \n\t\u201cWhy did you buy me (fill in the blank<\/em>), I\u2019ll never use it.\u201d\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not sitting in the backseat, you sit there.\u201d \n\tI tried to let her jabs roll off, like water from a duck\u2019s back. \u201cQuack-quack,\u201d Peter mouthed when she visited. I pictured myself a Teal or Ruddy, ducks with attitude, to cloak my heart in blue-, green- and rufous-colored feathers. \n\tBut feathers weren\u2019t Teflon.\n\tLeading up to her frequent visits, I asked my married friends for advice, yelled at Peter for not standing up, saw a counselor. I also pictured her gone\u2014to the Peace Corps or worse. Imagining how she would go, via slow boat or aneurism or rare cancer, fueled restoring our old house: refinishing termite infested wood floors, grinding paint off wrought-iron, digging irrigation ditches in July when night-time temperatures hung around the century mark. \n\tI stopped daydreaming when Peter found a lump. When I asked Judith, a registered nurse at the time, what caused his cancer, she answered, \u201cYour fighting,\u201d meaning if I\u2019d cooked to her liking, wore Birkenstocks, and understood my place in the backseat of our lives, he would not be on a fast train to oblivion.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\u201cDo you think she\u2019ll turn him into a saint afterwards?\u201d I asked Jeannie, Judith\u2019s younger cousin, Aunt Helen\u2019s daughter. We sat on my patio in full October sun; taking a breather from witnessing Peter dissolve. Jeannie had flown in from New York to say goodbye. \n\tShe clutched my arm. \u201cHe\u2019s her super hero now, imagine after he dies. Everything he did will have been better than everyone else. She will be unbearable. Peter this\u2026Peter that\u2026\u201d\n\t\u201cHow do you put up with her?\u201d\n\tJeanie shrugged, \u201cShe\u2019s family.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\tMy family did not put-up with. We shunned. Dad and his sister didn\u2019t speak. Mom lost track of her brothers. Sometimes there were reasons. Mom\u2019s older brother a drunk and womanizer, the younger one mad she used money he had given her to safeguard on flying lessons. Dad said he never liked his sister. Other exorcisms were over ideals. My older sister moved to Berkley and morphed into a suede-fringe-wearing, poetry-writing liberal. This metamorphosis was enough for my parents to say they had one daughter, me, when new acquaintances asked about children.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\tThe summer after Peter died, when Lyda wasn\u2019t quite two, I hired a witch doctor to make contact, not to cleanse the house of Peter\u2019s presence, as I constantly looked for signs from him, but to make sure he was alright, wherever he may be. A month prior I had woken to lights in my bedroom doorway and felt a presence. I wanted to believe it was Peter, but maybe it was the soul of two owners back, an elderly lady who had died there. Was our two-bedroom, one-bath house big enough for two celestial beings or were they wrestling with one another? \n\tThe witch doctor waved the smoking sage bundle over the coconut. Once. Twice. Three times. Two devotional candles with the Virgin Mary painted on their sides burned. The witch doctor, me, and the midwife who delivered Lyda, sat on the living room\u2019s sofa and stared at the offerings on the coffee table. The witch doctor, a friend of a friend of the midwife, was from the Andes, a woman in her forties, small in stature, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Not the wizened older soul with feathers braided into gray hair I had expected. The shaman smudged the coconut again. It really didn\u2019t look like Peter.  \n\tPrior to the ceremony, she had sent a supply list. Lyda and I visited a store in the Barrio to buy candles typical of Catholic mass and a coconut that resembled Peter. I held up each, positioned it so the eyes faced Lyda sitting in the shopping cart and asked, \u201cDoes this look like Daddy?\u201d She shook her head. After a dozen failures, I pawed through the bin and found the most oblong one with the most fibrous growth, albeit it was reddish-brown. Peter had a narrow face with thick to-die-for curly black hair.\n\t\u201cNo worries,\u201d the witch doctor said. \u201cYour husband isn\u2019t troubled with the soul of the other person who died here.\u201d \n\tI leaned back into the sofa pillows, relieved.    \n\t\u201cI do though, sense hostility. Anger. Unhappiness. Perhaps it was because he was young and those left behind are still processing.\u201d She instructed me to light candles regularly and burn sage in all the rooms\u2019 corners.  \n\t\u201cHow many should I light after someone I don\u2019t like leaves? Someone who upsets me?\u201d The shaman furrowed her eyebrows. Her lashes were almost as full and as dark as Peter\u2019s. \u201cThis is your home,\u201d she said. \u201cOnly allow in people who care about you.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\u201cHere\u2019s a pad of paper. Take notes,\u201d my attorney, who specialized in divorce, with the ironic last name of Everlove, said. Tired of Judith\u2019s demands of mediation, psychological evaluation (mine and Lyda\u2019s), regular therapy for Lyda, and Judith\u2019s anger, especially after she showed up for a visit to find Lyda and I had other plans, I sought a pit-bull. Everlove\u2019s name was top of the list. \n\t\u201cNow that your former mother-in-law lives in Tucson, overnights and holidays are real possibilities,\u201d Everlove said. \u201cShe could ask for more frequent visits, too.\u201d Prior to re-locating, Judith visited four times a year and saw Lyda during the daytime over the course of a long weekend. \u201cYour remarriage might counter more visitation. Her requested additional time would interfere with creating a new family.\u201d \n\tShe moved to Tucson six years after Peter died, and two weeks before my second wedding. I had half-expected her to show up at the Episcopalian church, burst through the wooden doors a la The Graduate and shout \u201cHow dare you go on with your life.\u201d Everlove told me to call 911 if she showed. Luckily, she did not.\n\t\u201cIt will be at least a one-day trial, possibly two,\u201d Everlove said. \u201cWith a judge. Answer questions succinctly, shut-up, be civil, address the judge, Judith, her lawyer formally. Dress conservatively. No tits, no slits, no ass.\u201d I was envious of Everlove\u2019s pastel pant suits, tailored-made with matching one-inch pumps. \u201cWear low-heeled closed-toed shoes. Don\u2019t talk unless spoken to. Don\u2019t take your hands out of your lap. No doodling.\u201d She glared at me.\n\tHer instructions up to the last bit were a no-brainer. But no doodling? My pent-up energy would have to go somewhere. But where, if not into inky swirls? \n \t\u201cLooks like you\u2019re not paying attention,\u201d she said. I had planned to tune out, self-medicate by drawing flowers, rabbits, trees, pages of forest animals. \u201cTo stop twitching, drill your heels into the floor. Do not take off your shoes. The judge can see every movement you make. No eye rolling. No frowns. No lip curls. Judges hate it when parties are rude to each other, especially when small kids are concerned. And whatever you do, do not interrupt me, the other attorney, and certainly not the judge. Let the opposing side go off the rails. Don\u2019t let what she says bother you. Do you understand?\u201d\n\tI almost mouthed quack-quack.  \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t I wore a navy-blue with green piping St. John knit suit, a blue-winged teal costume. I looked great and I promised myself I\u2019d buy another of the pricey outfits if I behaved. Judith took the stand, as well as Jeannie, the psychologist, me.\nI nearly drilled a hole in the carpet with my one-inch blue pumps. I rephrased Judith\u2019s lawyers\u2019 questions and asked for confirmation to compose myself before answering. I stared straight ahead when Judith said something rude or untrue; halted impending eye-rolls when the psychologist or Jeannie walked the line of not saying anything derogatory about either Judith or I, and in the process pissed me off. Judith\u2019s lawyer hadn\u2019t given her the same lecture or she hadn\u2019t listened. By the afternoon, she had broken most of Everlove\u2019s rules, including interrupting her lawyer and the judge. \n\tThe judge ruled in my favor. Not for the St. John Knit or conservative pumps or tight lips, or because Judith flipped off the rails, but because of Troxel v. Granville, a recent Supreme Court ruling which deemed grandparents\u2019 rights law unconstitutional. Six years of legal papers and psychologists reports, with fees amounting to a year\u2019s full ride at Harvard University, were stuffed into a banker\u2019s box and placed on my shed\u2019s highest shelf so no nasty juju would seep into the house.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\u201cThough you\u2019d like to slam and bolt the door against her,\u201d Everlove said at our debrief, \u201cDon\u2019t. Laws change. Let her see her grandchild regularly, then if grandparent rights swing in her favor, she won\u2019t have a case.\u201d\n\tLawyers can be such killjoys. \n\t\u201cStep away,\u201d Everlove said. \u201cLet the two of them make arrangements. An eight-year-old can answer the phone and keep a calendar. Remember, your former mother-in-law is hurting and Lyda is all she has.\u201d\n\tI had<\/em> planned to shun the woman, like my father to his sister, like my mother to her brothers. But I was into signs from Peter, and while I tried not to believe, I believed Everlove\u2019s words were him talking. So mad was I that he died, that he left me, left me to Judith\u2019s thrashings, left me to fend for myself as a single mom, left me to remarry, this time to an alcoholic, mad still after all these years, I barely mentioned Peter\u2019s name. Talking through the lawyer was his way of saying, \u201cRemember me.\u201d \n\tI followed Everlove\u2019s advice. Lyda, who had been telling me how to drive since she was three-years old, would have an opinion about Judith\u2019s visits. If they weren\u2019t working out, she would say \u2018not now,\u2019 or as I hoped, \u2018not ever.\u2019\n\tBut Lyda liked her grandmother. Liked to hear stories about her dad as a kid, see photos of him her age, looking like her with his long hair, casting for fish, stories I couldn\u2019t tell. She returned from afternoons with Judith of tales that made him real to her. Later, she and Judith graduated to art openings, theater, new restaurants. Sometimes I wondered if Lyda saw her grandmother to spite me. Teenagers are like that.\n\tAfter visits, I interrogated Lyda, asked who said what, to uncover unhappiness, searching for termite-infested floor joists beneath polished parquet flooring. Riddled planks abounded\u2014Lyda wasn\u2019t reading up to grade, afterschool activities lacked, disheveled hair\u2014but Lyda looked past Judith\u2019s gnawing and grew to resent my asking. \n\tFriends would report if they spotted the twosome. \u201cWhat a nice daughter you raised,\u201d they said, after seeing her with Judith and an arthritic Chihuahua at the farmer\u2019s market. \u201cShe carried her grandmother\u2019s bags, held her coffee, cleaned up after the dog. So sweet.\u201d  When I grunted and told our history, they didn\u2019t believe me. But I had boxes in my shed, rotten I-beams, so I learned not to talk of the boxes\u2019 content to others or to my daughter.    \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\tLyda burst through the back door, home early from diner with Judith, and tossed car keys onto the counter. She was crying.  \n\t \u201cWhat did she do this time?\u201d \n\tI was ready for: Judith had dissed her hair, avant-garde<\/em> clothing, choice of school electives. Again. I was ready to diss Judith, tell Lyda the woman was a piece of work. Again.\n \t\u201cShe has pancreatic cancer.\u201d A cancer Judith\u2019s father, Lyda\u2019s great-grandfather had died of, a cancer with a very low survival rate, one percent post five years.\n\tThis was the moment I\u2019d wished for all those years ago as I sanded wood floors, dug irrigation canals, when I imagined her gone. But from Lyda\u2019s tears, slope of shoulders, and tussled hair, gone would be upsetting. Gone would be difficult for Lyda, gone would be difficult for me to watch Lyda suffer.  \n\tLyda expected me to help. \u201cTell her we\u2019ll take care of Charlie if he needs taking care of.\u201d What was one cantankerous Chihuahua when we had two others, especially when he was closing in on his expiration date.\n\tLyda pulled her shoulders upright, finger-combed hair.\n\tAn olive branch had been offered.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t Judith handed me a platter. We stood awkwardly in my kitchen. \n\t\u201cGoat cheese and crackers.\u201d\n\tIt was Boxing Day, and I\u2019d invited her for dinner. A week earlier, Lyda had said, \u2018I\u2019m going to graduate from college in the spring. I need you two to stand in the same room together. I don\u2019t want any weirdness like at high school graduation.\u201d Meaning, I stood on the opposite side of the auditorium and did not invite Judith to the celebratory BBQ afterwards. Lyda had suggested Boxing Day, still a holiday but unsacred so a family spat wouldn\u2019t forever ruin the day, suggested we each invite a friend. To relieve my anxiety, I\u2019d spent the hours preceding a six o\u2019clock doorbell ring cooking vegetarian pozole, kale and pomegranate salad, a Meyer-lemon tart. \nI accepted the cheese peace offering. \u201cHow\u2019s Charlie?\u201d I asked. The dog had to be close to seventeen.\n\t\u201cSurprising everyone with his vigor.\u201d  \n\tAfterwards, Lyda said, \u201cSee, that wasn\u2019t so bad. No need to smudge the room.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\u201cJudith called,\u201d Lyda said on the phone from her apartment in Seattle, where she attended graduate school. \u201cShe has kidney cancer.\u201d Lyda\u2019s voice wavered. \u201cShe expects me to come to Scottsdale for the operation next week. I\u2019m not up for this. I\u2019ve got class to teach, I\u2019m behind in my research.\u201d Judith had a network of friends to support her, Lyda said, but her grandmother insisted she fly south. \u201cWill you come, too?\u201d \n\tNo. \u201cIt\u2019s on a Friday. I\u2019ve got work. The dog. You know how I hate Scottsdale.\u201d But when my feisty grown-up daughter said, \u201cI can\u2019t do this without you,\u201d and cried, I said sure. \n\tThe two-and-a-half-hour drive with Ellie, the family\u2019s Chinese crested powder puff lap dog with her own medical issues, in the passenger seat, bolstered by Bruce Springsteen\u2019s hard life lyrics blasting from my iPhone, gave me time to strategize. Lyda worried her grandmother would die, if not this weekend, then soon. The visit meant I could show Lyda that the two important women in her life could, god-forbid, be cordial. Turning Bruce down a bit, I practiced saying, \u201cYou know, Judith, it\u2019s great for Lyda that we\u2019ve put the past behind us and forgiven each other.\u201d Even Ellie perked up her ears at the quintessential deathbed atonement. \n\tAs we checked into our hotel, stowed the dog, took a right when we should have taken a left from the parking lot, bought coffee, retraced our path, and otherwise put off what we came to do, I wondered how scary can an eighty-something-year-old woman, one day after cancerous kidney removal, be? \n\t\u201cWhat took you so long?\u201d she said. \u201cI heard you two were out gallivanting.\u201d\n\tLyda stuck out a to-go cup. \u201cWe brought you coffee.\u201d\n\tJudith sipped our peace offering. \u201cIt\u2019s cold.\u201d \n\tSo much for being weak and debilitated.\n\t\u201cI\u2019ll find someplace to heat it up for you,\u201d Lyda said.\n\t\u201cCafeteria. First floor,\u201d Judith said. \u201cYou might find Laura there, I asked her to inquire about my lunch.\u201d On our way in, we\u2019d passed Judith\u2019s friend at the nurse\u2019s station, deep in conversation. Discussing spaghetti sans<\/em> meatballs, since Judith was a vegetarian.\n\tLyda glanced at me on the way out the door, communicating, \u2018You better be here when I return.\u2019\n\tIt may well have been the first time I had been alone with Judith since Peter died. I\u2019d have to soldier through, as it would be several hours to call into play my exit strategy, Ellie, most likely still curled into a ball on the hotel bed asleep, where I left her, would need to be walked or fed.\n\t\u201cSo, how hard was it to find me a cup of real coffee?\u201d \n\tI\u2019m nineteen again.\n\tBefore I explained about the wrong turn, my obsession with supporting independent coffee shops (Scottsdale was a desert in more ways than one), a stop at Goodwill (Lyda), and Whole Foods (me), the nurse bustled in and Judith, former nurse, turned her high-beams on her: check the IV, pour water, raise bed, close curtains.\n  \tShe hurled commands like a Vietnam combat soldier sprayed foliage with bullets as cover for his platoon\u2019s advancements. With each dig at subpar care, she seemed to gain the upper hand and relax a bit. The sourpuss attitude was a mask, blanketing fear. Fear of dying, fear of change, fear Peter lived a life without her influence. Aunt Helen, too, when Judith first introduced me on that rickety wooden porch of the socialist communal hall, fear that a Midwestern shiksa would pollute the gene pool, fear I would take the brilliant descendant away and summertime would never be the same.   \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t***\n\t\n\tJudith snags another orange puff from the plate perched on the empty chair between us. Lola swivels her keen eyes toward Judith\u2019s hand and Judith tosses her the puff.\n\t\u201cWhoa, there!\u201d I say. \u201cThe dog\u2019s fat, remember?\u201d a reprimand my nineteen-year-old self could never have barked.\n\tLola scarfs the goodie as Judith shrugs. Her eyes study my face, with the same drill-down as Lola\u2019s when she eyed the snack Judith held mid-air. \u201cYours is dirty.\u201d She waves her hand dramatically across her own fluorescent mouth.\n\t\u201cYours too.\u201d\n\tLyda approaches, a goblet in each hand, the third on the bar behind her. She shifts her gaze between us, brow furrowed. \u201cEverything okay?\u201d\n\tJudith takes a goblet, BFF<\/em> in pink cursive running around its side, from her granddaughter\u2019s hand. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t it be? We\u2019re waiting on you.\u201d\n\tStudying the two, they seemed at ease, my daughter simply wanting to please, a fiery child turned compassionate. Perhaps I had misinterpreted our scene in Judith\u2019s hospital room. Lyda\u2019s running off to warm Judith\u2019s coffee was just that, not an escape from her grandmother. Through her relationship with Judith, Lyda had learned to navigate orneriness and developed a skill that will serve her for the rest of her life, how to deal with difficult people. Perhaps instead of shunning and putting up with, I should lean in, like Peter\u2019s and my daughter had.\n\tWith my plastic goblet embellished with cutesiness, I clink to Judith\u2019s, \u201cTo good times.\u201d  \n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Lisa Harris <\/strong>(she\/her), a Pushcart Prize nominated author, has published in\u00a0Orion <\/em>Magazine,\u00a0Passages North,\u00a0Highlights for Children,\u00a0Litro Magazine, (M)othering\u00a0(Sorbie and Grogan, 2022), among others. Migrating between Seattle and Tucson as an environmental consultant, she has two daughters, six cats, two desert tortoises, and terrier Lola.\u00a0 @Harrislisakim; www.lisakharris.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At our fifth winery, my arm extends across an empty seat. The raised nose of my terrier Lola sniffs the plate of Cheetos cheese puffs I offer my eighty-seven-year-old former mother-in-law, Judith. She chooses one. Munching, we bob our heads to Mrs. Robinson. Florescent orange dusts her lips. Daughter Lyda, Judith\u2019s granddaughter and only descendant, … <\/p>\n
Continue reading ““My Husband, Her Son” by Lisa K. Harris”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2310,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3147","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}