I found this note taped to a bank of mailboxes.

They were on the road that I walk.

Take what you need, it said.

So I did.

Spontaneous trip to the lake, wrapped in fleecy blankets and eating sandwiches on the warmest day in January.

The water so clear and still we want to dip our toes in, maybe even wade up to our waists, or our chins until we can barely see above the deep blue mirror. But winter sun sets pale peach and we photograph and laugh and hug to scare away the cold.

I like that photographs keep days like this intact.

I had forgotten how much he meant to me,
Remembering felt incredible, obvious, miraculous.
This is to remind myself to remember.

"Júlia, When you turn 86 I will be 172"

Saturday, May 4th.

Nine days before mothers day, I ran away. This was not the first time, but that didn't make it much easier. I ran away because after seventeen years I decided enough was enough. I wanted a home where I could be myself and not be afraid to say how I feel. I wanted a stable sober home, because sobriety is so hard to maintain when the one person I wanted to rely on was feeding her addiction.

I spent years building up the courage to tell my mother that I was sick of taking care of her, and leaving myself to suffer. I always knew there was something not quite right about our family, whether is was the fact that my mother was always working, or never eating. Or the fact that my dad wasn't always there like he should have been. Somehow I knew my family wasn't like everyone else's. As I grew older I learned all of our dirty little secrets. I learned that my mother had a disease. I learned that my genes tell me to be an addict. I learned that the person I thought I hated was the most stable of us all. I learned that my father wasn't perfect.

At thirteen I found out the truth about my mothers disease. Alcoholism. I remember that day too well. I remember sitting with my dad in his Volvo, tan colored interior, convertible top. We were leaving my drum lesson when he told me the truth:

“Your mother....she drinks too much. She can’t stop. It’s not because of you, and there’s nothing you can do to get her to stop. She needs to hit rock bottom like I did. You need to stop trying to take care of her.”

I can’t say this was truly surprising to me, however, it came as a bit of a shock finding out how long she has had a problem. For twelve years I believed everything was okay. For twelve years I thought we were just a little odd. I thought it was normal to have a drink with every meal. I had fun playing around in the liquor store. I thought life would get better for us. I tried not to remember my childhood, not because it was bad, but because I always knew that my life would never be that happy again.

Growing up around addiction made the topic seem normal. I didn't feel so odd when i developed one of my own. I wish I could say I had been smarter, but instead I thought I was stronger. The strongest thing I could have done was say no, but now I fight my addiction every day, in a stable, sober household.

"Louder!" "Rehearsal." "Come to my class on time." "Rehearsal." "We are wearing all black, people!" "Rehearsal." "Take the A Train to 42nd Street." "We will be performing at Temple University." "Rehearsal." "Last senior show." "Stop crying." "Are you having a CTJ?!" "I hate you." "I love you guys." "The funeral was sad." "I got in to AMDA!" "We couldn't compete in the talent showcase we were so good." "We will be performing at Carnegie Hall." "Tuxedos, gentlemen!" "I hate singing." "So why are you HERE?!" "Let's sang on the train for money." "Can I get a order of french fries?" "What are you eating?" "I hate taking these school buses to the rehearsals." "SHUT UP!" "Wade In the Water" "Come To Jesus - CTJ" "Gold with distinguish." "Dear lord . . ." "Fortissimo" "Why are you speaking in my rehearsal." "Are you coming to rehearsal today?" "I think I'm going to cut class." "She can't even sing." "She is going to make it far." "Welcome to Performing Choir" "You know that song, its called . . . Damn, its on he tip of my tounge! Its, its . . . FOUR WOMEN!" "I'm going to sing at a German pub one day." "He is such a fake." "I'm a soprano." "I'm an alto" "I love those Tenors!" "The Basses are the real men!" "Lift Every Voice and Sing." "I think he is going to quit." "Do you think he can handle it?" "I can hear the Tenors" "I need you to hit that F sharp, CORRECTLY." "You guys are the best" "We WON!" "Some of you girls look like strippers in training in those skirts. We are going to RIVERSIDE CHURCH. Not RIVERSIDE CLUB." "I wish I can sing in your choir" "I am so tired of this pressure." "We are the best choir in New York State." "WHAT DID WE GET!" "Gold" "Gold. Only."

Silence. Tears. Laughter. Smiles. YELLS. Cursing. Song. Singing. Vocal. Music.

Hate. Spite. Nerves. Anxiety. Victory. . . . . . Love.

I was a clumsy child—goofy but deeply shy, given to wearing costumes. This photo gets at the spirit of who I was, though it has little to do with the specifics of the story I’m about to tell. My parents worked very hard to destroy all evidence of this story—all records, all traces have since been expunged—and I don’t blame them.

When I was five years old, I had a nasty bike accident. Mind you, I wasn’t riding the bike at the time, only pushing it along the sidewalk. But still, I managed to tangle my foot in the pedals and fall face first onto the pavement. I ran the rest of the way home, blood pooling in my t-shirt. My panicked mother checked my mouth, shocked to find that my teeth were still intact. The area between my nose and mouth hadn’t fared as well, a nasty scrape becoming a scabby moustache as the weekend wore on.

On Monday morning, I refused to go to school. I looked monstrous. I imagined myself living in the basement forever as some kind of kindergarten Phantom of the Opera. But my mom wasn’t having it—I was going to school.

In a last ditch effort to conceal the scab-moustache, I put on a rubber cat nose I’d received as a party favor a few weeks before. To my eye, it was a flawless disguise. No evidence of a scrape at all—just a perfectly normal five-year-old with a cat nose.

I wore the nose to school every day. My parents bought me a handful of other noses—dog, rabbit, duck—both as a gesture of support and as a less-disgusting alternative to the rapidly deteriorating cat nose. The plan worked too well. Long after my mouth had healed, the noses stayed on.

I played the glockenspiel at my Kindermusik recital wearing a dog nose. I graduated from kindergarten in a black trash bag and a rabbit nose. I went to my sixth birthday party in a new outfit and the old cat nose. All of the other kids got noses as party favors, and we skated around the roller rink together like some unholy menagerie.

One night, the noses disappeared from their post next to my bed. I was devastated—and then promptly forgot about them.

When I was sixteen, my family moved—and somewhere in all of the packing and unpacking, I found the cat nose. Sure that it would make for an excellent prank, I decided to wear it around the house for the day. But the nose was unbearably uncomfortable—hot, damp, reeking of rubber. For the life of me, I don’t know how I wore it all those months.

My name is Nicole Snow. My dad, Jamie Snow, was wrongfully convicted for murder when I was around four years old. My family and I have lived under the shadow of this for going on 13 years. We were raised without a father under the shadow of a convicted murderer in this small town. He didn't do it, and now the University of Chicago's Exoneration Project is representing him. We are still fighting to prove his innocence, but he still sits in prison. This is my story of being raised under this "black cloud" in a small town in Illinois. Thanks for listening.

I'd never remembered seeing this photo before. I came across it when going through a box of old family slides.

I think it is the summer of 1962, probably just after Mom and I came back from our trip to England and Scotland. I was a tomboy. I think you can tell. But I also liked getting gussied up. But play was play and the messier the better. We are standing on the front lawn of our house in Kemptville. I am 5, just about to turn 6. Mom's hair is brassy red from a colour rinse that reacted with the salt air and water in England. The dress is familiar. I can still remember the texture of the material... thick but soft. I don't know who took the photo but it caught the essence of the relationship between my and my Mom. Laughter, love, comfort, the need to touch and remind the other "We are still here", "I am still here".

A year later, Mom met and married my step-Dad, I met my step-brothers, we moved away from the house and the town.

Change is in the air, the day is ending, we won't always be here, here we are.

Mom is 87 and has Alzheimer's and, in some ways, our roles are reversed but she still protects me... it's just that I do most of the protecting, now.

Around mile six, a little boy ran past me. “No more hurting people” was handwritten in black marker across the back of his shirt. I recognized the words from a photo of Martin Richard, the young boy who died in the Boston Marathon bombing. The boy who passed me had legs that looked too young and coltish to take him the whole way, but there he was. Running, I decided, for the little boy who couldn’t.

It made me wonder, for the first time, why I was running. I’d arrived at the start line with an injured hip; I wasn’t chasing a personal record. I’d run this distance before, so I had no new milestone to achieve. Uncharacteristically, I had nothing to prove, and I couldn’t think of any real reason to do this to myself. Still, there I was. Running.

Why?

The young runner disappeared into the pack head as we passed a dozen kids playing ukuleles outside of their school. They were awake at 7AM on a Sunday just to give bunch of strangers reason to smile as they ran thirteen or twenty-six miles. A little further along, another boy stood solemn-faced in the middle of the road holding a bright green sign that said, “Touch here for power.” I did, and I ran faster.

I thought about the block around mile three that smelled like bacon, its pajama-clad neighbors sharing coffee we passed. About the man wearing sunglasses who stood next to an inflatable dinosaur with a sign that begged: “Run quieter – I’m hungover.” Volunteers gave us water and Gatorade every few miles, and swept up all the empty cups we left on the ground. A woman dressed as a bee handed out honey-flavored candy on one side of the street; a girl held out her hand for high-fives on the other. All manner of different bodies carried themselves mile after mile after mile. Each had a different gait, a different motivation: people ran for causes, for loved ones, for themselves. Slowly, it dawned on me how rare it is to share a goal and a road with seven thousand other people, and to have just as many people cheering you through to the finish. My throat tightened up, and I fell into step with the runner beside me. I understood.

It isn’t something I do to myself; it’s something I do with you.

I'm always the last one left waiting on the street corner. Slowly, Melissa descends off the school bus, holding onto the railing carefully. She extends her hand to meet mine as I help her off the last step.

My sister Melissa is nine years old and is afflicted with Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a form of muscular dystrophy. She uses legs braces, a walker, and sometimes a wheelchair. Neither apparatus fits onto the bus, so the two of us trudge home hand-in-hand at a snail’s pace. As we walk home, she buzzes enthusiastically, in her high soprano voice, about her friends at recess and the excessive homework her fourth-grade teacher Mrs.Meyers assigns. She reminds me to pick out her outfit for Spirit Day on Thursday. I remind her not to dilly-dally when she does her physical therapy. She grumbles.

But I do what sisters do.

As she steps onto the curb, I suspend my arms around her to catch her in case she stumbles. I’ve always been protective, since Melissa came to live in America four years ago. From scheduling her doctor’s appointment to teaching her to read, that’s just been my role. But as she matures into a determined, vivacious young girl, she begins to seek more independence. Sometimes when I offer one reminder too many, she tells me to quit nagging and to go help someone else.

Now, as she struggles to wrap her fingers around the door handle, I let her try to open it by herself. It’s harder than it used to be—CMT is progressive, and her muscles will continue to deteriorate over the course of her lifetime. But Melissa keeps trying her best.

She perseveres and manages to drag the door open, and as she steps in, suddenly voices a plaintive concern, “Sister, Jie-jie, what’s going to happen when you go to college? You won’t be my sister anymore.”

I stop, bending down to meet her perplexed eyes. “Don’t worry. Being your sister is who I am.” Unspoken is the inspiration she offers me every single day. I hope she understands anyway.

Melissa’s perseverance, unfailing belief in herself, and my role as a sister to protect and to give—those have irrevocably shaped me as a person. As the screen door slams shut, I realize that I may be an advocate, activist, soon-to-be college student, but my first and foremost role is being Melissa’s sister.