PAULA NEAL MOONEY

Past a curved lane and down a rocky driveway sliced through a swath of skinny towering pines in New Franklin, Ohio, an oasis emerges. Complete calm exudes from the modern ranch resting amid fives acres of greenery, despite telltale signs of young life everywhere: upside-down bicycle helmets strewn about the lawn, a gray pygmy goat hopping atop his pen. Other clues point to a cog missing from the well-oiled machine. Fresh lettering on the mailbox spells out only one name, that of 41-year-old Dan McNeill, who jokes with his children as they beg to go fishing. Yet when they depart and talk turns to their mother, Barbara Jean McNeill, Dan’s eyes glisten behind the panes of his glasses and his head drops. “I’m capable of dying of a broken heart,” he sighs. Feb. 6, 2006 The date will forever be a bold notch on the timelines of those who loved Barb, a 38-year-old homemaker. On that cold Monday, Dan carted their six home-schooled children down to Salt Fork State Park for a day of fun and learn...

“Don’t you want me too, Mommy?” my son Cameron asked. He wriggled in the middle of our bed, outside the two lines formed by my daughter Cara’s body and my own. His vulnerable question transported me back three decades in time. I was once again a young girl, sitting with my mother on the edge of her bed, confronting her for the first time about her obvious favoritism for my one and only sibling. “You like Amber better than me!” I whined. It was a scene straight out of “The Brady Bunch,” with me cast as the oft-ignored Jan. But there was no laugh track in that bedroom with the coffee-bean colored hardwood floors, no warm-hearted denouement within 28 minutes whereby Mike and Carol dipped their heads into my room to assure me I was an equal. “No I don’t,” Mommy answered, and turned her head down and to the left, but not far enough to hide the smirk on her face. My mother’s preference for my big sister was apparent long before she admitted it. Amber was the baby she had wanted forever, the ...

"What do you think about Akron, Ohio?" Chris directed his question away from the headhunter on the phone. I paused about two seconds before wrinkling my nose and shaking my head in disapproval. Ten stories up into our skyscraper’s air, with the bustling downtown Chicago streets that bore and bred us beneath our feet, my future husband and I were desperate to move away from our psycho boss. But Akron sounded like an expanse of green more populated by cows than people. "Let us show you around beautiful Fairlawn," promised a different raspy-voiced fellow on our answering machine. I chuckled. How beautiful could it be? Pretty beautiful, it turned out – especially once the hand attached to that voice pushed salaries that represented whopping raises across a conference room table. In no time flat Chris and I packed our black Ford Explorer to the armrests and made the short trek across Interstate 80 eastbound toward our new lives. But four years into the deal, I couldn’t s...

S WF (Spectacular Writer of Freelance) – 30s, dead stringer for Anita Shreve, with shapely similes and long, flowing prose – seeks Editor for perfect binding, possible long-term masthead relationship. Likes: Long drives to think up “think pieces,” rewarding collaborations, easy on the redlining. Misses the feel of free issues in my mailbox before they hit the stands, the look of my name in 36-point boldface serifs. I know you’re out there, climbing a Mount Everest of queries, my quality mate with a circulation in the millions. And I won’t stop until we meet. It’s been forever since a real writing credit has made my heart flutter and account balance rise. Need a good one to make my family and comrades insanely jealous. A marriage between us might clinch the next National Magazine Award or someday birth baby anthologies. Dislikes: No commitment-phobes. Ready for Frequent Contributor stauts. Take note: Been burned in the past by Speculative Seekers who lured me into “opening a vein” and s...

"H ey Paula…" the desperation in Kasha’s voice screams louder than her son in the background. "Do you want to go somewhere?" It’s the warmest and sunniest day of the year so far, a gift better than chocolate for two homemakers like us. "Yeah…" I pause, mulling over park locations in my mind. Will it be the quiet splendor of Naturealm? Or the hustle and bustle of Fort Island, a primary-colored paradise for kids? Nope. A day this magnificent calls for only one place. "What about Hinckley Reservation?" "Where?" Like an eager tour guide, I watch Kasha take in the huge waterfall at the park’s entrance. The sheet of gray liquid rushes over the lake’s edge like a wide curtain hinting at delights to follow. "This is beautiful," she says. Our first stop is the cozy boathouse down the hill, where we sip coffee and bribe our kids with Skittles to buy a few minutes of blessed peace. Mid-morning fog lingers atop the tall pine trees. "...

"M y mother works ," my sister Amber and I bragged to our Tartan-skirted classmates at St. Edmund’s Parochial School. It was the early 1970s, and after a short stint as a housewife, Mommy answered the clarion call sounded by women who marched the streets and set their bras ablaze in garbage cans. "You need to get me something," was her ironically anti-feminist demand to my father upon choosing to reclaim her career. That "something" turned out to be a secretarial service – my mom’s very own two-room office in a musty building with dingy skylights. I liked being the daughter of an entrepreneur, not a docile, housecoat wearing, kitchen-bound frump, which is how I envisioned my friends’ homemaker mothers. But at school day’s end when all the students filed out the forest green gates surrounding the yard, Amber and I were often the last ones left, looking fearfully into the distance and crying. By 1999, my derogatory view of at-home mothers hadn’t changed much...

I am 8 or 9, all lanky arms, knobby knees and budding breasts. It’s a rare occasion because my father is actually home, not working his late shift at the post office or decorating a stool at some local tavern. Enamored by his sheer presence, I recline my head on his shoulder while he zones out on the sofa watching TV. My mother saunters by, surveying the situation. "That’s my husband," she says to me, pausing in the kitchen doorway, pointing at her chest for emphasis. Both Daddy and I gaze at her for a few seconds of shocked silence. As meaning descends upon my adolescent brain, I lunge up the thinly carpeted burnt orange staircase to my bedroom. Early American Discord is the décor that permeates my childhood home, my room being no exception. It is a sad and lonely space with slanted walls pierced here and there by squirrels trying to claw their way through from the attic. It’s the same vantage point from which I listen midnight after midnight for the sound of my dad’s key i...