Diane Henrikson Russell
My 13th birthday was on Sunday, July 18, 1965. We three sisters usually had separate parties with our friends and our family. Six-year-old Jan celebrated her birthday in March, while three-year-old Michele and I celebrated together with our family since she was born just four days before my 10th birthday.
This birthday was different. Mom (also known as Lois) was undergoing a hysterectomy the following day. Mom had had three very difficult pregnancies and we three sisters were lucky to be here. Nine days after Michele’s birth, Mom started hemorrhaging at home and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital for an emergency D&C. The fact that she had a bleeding disorder made the hysterectomy a necessity and a worry at the same time. Would she recover okay or have complications?
“…and that adds up to 26 dollars”, sighed my mother Nancy. Worry lines played over the soft, beautiful skin of her face as she consigned thin dollar bills into little brown envelopes, each marked with its own label: “groceries”, “rent”, and so on. Those little packets were the kind you got from the bank, small enough to hide secrets, wrapped securely with rubber bands to keep their precious contents in place, and softened from years of handling.
We like to end each year with an issue in which we look back at the stories, poems, articles, memoirs, and–well, whatever–that we’ve published during the past 51 weeks. And we have a staggering variety this time around.
Well, we have arrived at Week 4 of the To Tell the Truth Contest. How are you doing so far? Do you think you have correctly sussed out truth from fiction? Don’t forget to leave your True/False vote in the comment section below the authors’ biographies. After we compile all the responses, we will select the winner and announce his or her name and reveal the veracity of each of the ten entrants in December. Stay tuned for one more bonus episode this Thursday, but for now enjoy Marilyn Myerson’s The Haunting: Ghosts in my Life and Diane Henrikson Russel’s Pet Cards and To Tell the Truth. — Editor 
My favorite memory of Mom was her ability to produce beautiful wearable items sewn by her hands and heart. She was a good seamstress. Not great, because she could not design and cut out a garment without a pattern like the contestants on Project Runway. She was good because she could purchase a Simplicity (her favorite) pattern, select the fabric and create an outfit anyone would be proud to wear.
I had insomnia on Memorial Day weekend of 2016 and disregarded the advice not to check my phone.
Beginning in 1949, after narrowly surviving WW II in Europe, my parents Marta and Stefan Orzechowski and I spent fifteen arduous years in exile in Argentina—starting from zero. Meanwhile, Poland, our country, was under the vicious heel of Soviet-imposed Communism.