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Magnified Grass

writings of

LIFE & LIVING

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THE TALE OF HOW THE GOVERNOR CAME TO BE

stephanieraffelock

Jun 25, 2020
4 min

THE TALE OF HOW THE GOVERNOR CAME TO BE

In the mid-1960’s in South Denver, a short distance from the apartment where my mother and I lived, was a hotel on Colorado Boulevard. I think it was called Writer’s Manor. Or maybe it was Riter’s Manor. “A fancy place,” my mom called it. They had a large dining room in which all the tables were covered in white tablecloths, each graced by a small vase of fresh flowers. At one end of the room, a wall of windows overlooked an inviting swimming pool. The first time that I went

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Suitable for Re-framing

stephanieraffelock

Oct 10, 2019
3 min

Suitable for Re-framing

My mom: Cleopha Marie Tylenda There aren’t a lot of photos of my mother as a little girl. Personal photography was not a common thing when she was growing up. Rather, it was the work of a hired professional. For an ordinary family, it was a big deal to memorialize a moment of life in a photograph. Yet a handful of images from my mother’s young life exist. A framed photograph on my living room bookshelf shows mom when she was about two years old. Holding onto her small toddler

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A Morning From A Child’s Page

stephanieraffelock

Jan 25, 2018
2 min

A Morning From A Child’s Page

The morning is black and the days are slow to gather light. Winter hovers over us with piercing silence and the language of snow. A chipped ceramic statue of Mary lives on the dining room table and watches me play. I pray to her, asking her to bring my mother back. The sound of a chair scrapping against the worn linoleum, and the creak of the floor against Julia’s shoes break the spell. I can smell biscuits and coffee and I get up from my warm place by the stove and sit down

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Is Age Just A Number?

stephanieraffelock

Jul 27, 2014
4 min

Is Age Just A Number?

The impervious feeling of youth is a delicious drunk of newness and firsts: first apartment, first true love, first heartbreak; the delight of garage sales and thrift shops, that furnish the backdrop upon which one begins to build a life, blissfully unaware of the baggage of childhood that follows them into independence and self-sufficiency. In my twenties, I surfed in the mornings with Bernie, napped in the afternoons and then waited cocktails at night to pay for a life styl

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