Stories I Tell Myself
Linda Brody Bakst on Brooklyn, growing up, identity and more
Category: memoir blog
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NOTE: I submitted this piece to the Brooklyn Nonfiction Prize and it was selected as a finalist. Yesterday was the reading and though I did not win, I am proud to have participated. It always feels a bit risky to put yourself out there, but if you don’t you can’t grow. My family has been…
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I’m not sure what happened exactly, but something has crystalized for me. I have been writing this blog, participating in writing groups, taking classes online and in person and spending countless hours thinking over the past 7 ½ years, but it is only in the last month that it has become clear to me that…
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It was a painful week. We made the agonizing, distressing, heartbreaking decision to euthanize Raffa, our cat. It was the right decision; she was suffering, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t question whether it was the right thing to do, whether it was time to do it, whether there was any hope she could recover.…
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As is often the case for me, I was sorting through papers (oh, the endless supply of paper!) and found something I wrote early in 1994. To give some context, Leah was in first grade, Dan was in pre-k (daycare at the Albany Jewish Community Center) and I was working full-time for the state Department…
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Baseball is a thread through my family history. Zada, my maternal grandfather, was a fan and as a result my mom grew up going to games, most often at the Polo Grounds. Zada took the opportunity to impart life lessons to his young daughter. One time a player on the New York Giants pitched poorly…
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Today, December 20th, 2022, my Dad, Barry Brody, would be 90 years old. Sadly, he only got to celebrate his 72nd birthday, and he was not well when that milestone arrived. We did not understand at the time that he had an aggressive form of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). We thought CLL was an indolent…
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Note: I have been absent for a month! There are many reasons for that – I will write about it at another time. I am glad to be back! I look forward to continuing our conversation about stories we tell ourselves. December 15, 2022 would be my father-in-law’s 100th birthday. David Bakst made it to…
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Though I don’t consider myself a photographer, I do like to take pictures. I find that, as long as I don’t get too caught up in the mechanics of it, it helps to notice the beauty around me and to solidify the memory in my brain. I snapped a lot of pictures on our trip…
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I originally planned this trip to the southwest of the United States in 2019 long before I had ever heard of Covid-19. We were supposed to go in May of 2020 but had to cancel, much to my disappointment. Well, we are taking the trip now! This past Friday we flew from Albany to Albuquerque,…
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Let’s go Mets! Or, in this age of social media, #LFGM! But, let’s keep it old school for the time being. We did just go to Old Timers’ Day at Citi Field, which took us back to an earlier era. Months ago, when it was announced that the Mets would host an Old Timers’ Day…
