Catherine Gigante-Brown

Were you going to run into that cute guy John Williams on the way home? Would you see Anne Marie by the lockers and sort out what to do for the weekend? It was hit-or-miss, and that was the beauty of it. The breath-holding chance of it all. Now, our kids’ friends are as close as a keyboard stroke away. It’s too easy.

My husband and I agreed: raising a child with an independent spirit who made decisions for himself was a good thing.

raunchy renaissance woman. multimedia artist. probably a slut.

You realize pretty soon that everything other than cancer — i.e. missing a train, being late to your dentist appointment — is no biggie compared to the suck factor of chemo.

All bets were off after 9/11. In a twisted way, it proved to me that worry was fruitless. No one ever saw the terrorist attacks coming.

I was 21 –– a Catholic, heterosexual college student, living at home in Brooklyn and still trying to discover who I was. At the crossroads of her life, Lorde knew exactly who she was. She was waging a war against cancer and sharing an old house in Staten Island with her kids and partner. But maybe we weren’t so different after all.

The heartbreaking saga of a 14-year-old Black prostitute who was murdered in cold blood by her (maybe) pimp on Christmas Eve in 1900 Savannah.

As a breast cancer survivor, the worst day of the year is when I go for my mammogram. True, nobody actually likes mammos, but I’ve been bitten by one. On the way to my annual squishing, I realized that I have a bunch of coping strategies.

I try. I really do. But whenever I attempt to embrace my husband Peter’s Cuban culture, I always screw up.

If the odds of getting cancer are like Powerball, why couldn't I be a scratch-off millionaire?