When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Our office is moving and going paperless. I spent the day purging old files. So many notes and cards and letters and contracts and editorial letters and royalty statements and reviews. So much love and heartbreak. So many dreams realized and dashed. Everything we tried to do to break through. I’ve been in the front row to meteoric rises and ships that slipped beneath the waves. Everything was always so intense, striving, conniving, negotiating and tiptoeing. More bees with honey! Long editorial letters and pressed flowers. Postcards from the edge. Thank you notes. A poem from someone I used to know. Drafts of a book ten years in the making. And one file I couldn’t let go of. A writer I lost to the savage gods.
Who do you miss?
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Betsy Lerner 
No one. Everyone. You have no idea.
Right now, I’m really missing my brother Mike. He’s been gone two years now and I’m still waiting for it to get easier.
All of everything and none of nothing. My past has sailed away, but is always coming into harbour.
“Who do you miss?”
I miss them all, Betsy. A couple mornings ago, about 3:00, a most wee hour, I awakened and could not get back to sleep, as I was haunted by their ghosts. So I got up and got to work. Better that than lay there in the dark, tormenting myself. I miss them all.
I miss my dad, whom I suspect I never knew.
I miss my size tens. I had a pair of size 8s. They lasted one season. I am not talking about shoes.
Family and friends who have died. My old stories linger and languish. I cannot throw them away. Maybe some day–