Batalion’s relationship with her mother was thwarted by walls—both the emotional walls of dealing with her mother’s underlying illness and the physical barriers built from piles of junk.
When Amber Tozer was 13, she and her best friend crawled out a window, met two boys at the tennis courts, and passed around a bottle of bourbon until Tozer felt like a superhero.
Four over-inflated rubber wheels stared at me from the top shelf in our garage. Smooth and grey, the tires looked like fat, curled up seals. Gary bought them online for our daughter’s wheelchair.