Bonni Brodnick Blog

It creeps. It crawls. Run.  Don't walk. It will eat you alive. It's THE BLOB.                                                                                                                                                 (Click the thing) Happy Halloween. (MMMMWahahahahahhahhahah!)

M y mother slapped me across the face. She thought it would make things go back to the way they were before I went down for a nap. I was four years old and awoke with jumbled vision. I saw everything in doubles. Thus began my saga of Bonni being cross-eyed and having double vision. It’s called strabismus. This is an abnormality of the neuromuscle causing a weakness, or misalignment. Poor eye muscle control causes the eye to turn in. Unlike most people, my eyes don’t fuse the image. I see double. Treatment for strabismus, or crossed-eye, may include eyeglasses, prisms, and vision therapy or eye muscle surgery. In my lifetime, I’ve tried them all. When I was six years old, I wore a black eye patch. When I was on line for popsicles at the pool one summer afternoon, a girl behind me said, “Look at the pirate!” I turned around and said, “You know, I can’t  help  that I’m cross-eyed. Do you really think I want to look like this?” I felt like saying, “SHUT UP, you big, f...

Take a trip to Macy's fabric floor in 1966. Here you'll find my mother prepped to select patterns, zippers, threads and buttons as she begins her annual mission to hand-sew our childhood wardrobe.  I am pleased to announce that my new piece -- "Fall 1966: The Cool and Groovy Look" -- was invited to appear on the Hudson Valley Writers Center website.  Click here .

W hen I was growing up, my mother sewed everything my sister and I wore. Dresses. Skirts. Blouses. Bathing suits. Coats. Everything but our underwear.          And  by early August, my mother was already planning what we would wear on the first day of school. It was time to make our pilgrimage to the sewing floor of Macy’s department store. My little sister, older brother and I were like three little ducklings following my mother into the city (we called it the “city” and not “Manhattan” because we thought they were two different places). Since it was a day of walking the fabric floor, my mother wore sensible shoes:   woven leather low heels that reminded me of two little baskets on her feet. We began the journey from our home on Curtiss Place, in Maplewood, New Jersey, and took the Erie-Lackawanna railroad. The train had honey-colored straw seats that could flip around depending on whether you were going to or coming from the city. As the co...