A story…
She is standing at the stove when he walks in. “Mom, when’s dinner gonna be ready?”
“Soon, honey. The sauce is ready. Salad’s in the fridge. Garlic bread is in the oven. There’s nothing more for me to do besides cook the pasta. I’m just waiting for the water to come to a boil for the spaghetti. We’ll eat when dad gets home.”
“K. I’m just gonna get my soccer stuff for the game tonight.”
Meet me on the hill – the one where
we used to start at the top and race to the bottom.
Remember how we’d pick the sunniest day
and wait until after lunch
when the grass had sunned enough to be warm.
We’d start at the base of the biggest tree,
lay on our sides,
stretch our lean bodies and scream as we rolled,
mowing over dandelions and Johnny Jump Ups.
We’d make crooked zigzags all the way down,
and for the length of the ride,
the world turned into a blur of puffy clouds and green grass.
We’d reach the bottom,
gasping and laughing.
We wouldn’t even brush off our knees
before we started back up again,
pumping skinny arms and legs to reach the top. Continue reading →
“Well,” the Goddess said,*Maybe if we looked at it this way,
a broken heart wouldn’t seem insurmountable.
She was too exhausted to untie the bundle. He stood next to her and excitedly pulled at the bow that was wrapped tightly around the four corners of the blanket. His hands were shaking. He fumbled a bit, but the blanket fell open to reveal the most precious gift. He gently placed the baby in her arms. They didn’t notice the green organza bag that fell out of the blanket to the floor.
They cooed at the baby while the nurse placed the green bag inside an overnight bag.
__________
A couple days later a tired, happy, new mom unpacked the overnight bag. Inside she found the shiny green bag. Was it a gift from the hospital? In her exhaustion, had she forgotten who’d brought her this unusual gift? She opened the bag to find seven brightly colored pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. Surely there was a puzzle somewhere that was missing important pieces. Who could this belong to?
She was too tired to sort out the mystery, so she placed the green bag on the shelf above the changing table. Continue reading →
She had hoped he’d walk into the kitchen, smell the Spritz Cookies baking in the oven, warmly greet the kids, and come up behind to wrap her in his arms and whisper, “Merry Christmas, honey.” Instead, he walked in, grabbed the vacuum and started bumping into their toes as he cleaned up flour dust and cookie sprinkles. “Daddy, aren’t the cookies pretty?” He took a few more swipes with the vacuum and said, “Yes, honey, now let’s start cleaning up this mess.”
She’d planned to stroll arm-in-arm, watching the snow fall, seeing the Christmas lights twinkle, and enter shops to jointly select Santa’s gifts for the kids. Instead, he told her that he was too busy and shopping was a wife’s job.
She decorated the tree with ornaments the kids had made, hung the stockings she’d sewn for each of them, and hand-colored the Christmas cards she’d planned to mail to their friends and family. He told her he’d already sent cards to his friends and family, and that she didn’t need to bother combining his list with her list.
She put lots of thought into the gift she would make for him – maybe a collage of photos from his childhood, or a shadow box full of keepsakes from his outdoor adventures. He let out a sigh of frustration when he asked, “So, what should I be getting you this year?”
He’d sit on the couch and watch TV while she read The Tub People’s Christmas. When the kids giggled over the arrival of Santa in the story, he asked if they’d keep it down so he could hear his show. Continue reading →
Guest Post by Anonymous
At the age of 12, she didn’t know why she cared so much about her friend, the one who was a notorious mean girl. The one who played the games that mean girls do… She didn’t understand why that friend mattered so much to her, even more than those she had known forever, even more than the ones who had proven themselves to be kind, caring girls….
She didn’t understand until nearly a quarter of a century later why that person seemed “right” – seemed familiar…. In the two years before she ended the friendship with her narcissistic friend, she often questioned herself, “Why do I even care so much about someone I don’t respect, someone that has hurt me so many times?”
She didn’t put two and two together, that the friend who called her names and ignored her, was a lot like her dad, who shamed her and ignored her. Continue reading →
She sits in the glow of the computer screen, wringing her hands. It’s late – kids are in bed. She’d put her fingers on the home row and type, but she doesn’t know what to say.
She doesn’t know how to help.
She reads their words and feels their anguish. She senses the tightness in their chests. She hears the worries that keep them from sleep.
The instinct to want to protect their babies runs deep.
There is power in their anger. The strength required to control their anger makes them far stronger than most. Continue reading →
“Can I see you when I get out that way?”
She replied to his email – the one she shouldn’t have opened – with, “As friends.”
He didn’t like that answer. (Do guys ever like that answer?)
He waited to call, hoping she’d make the first move.
She didn’t. Continue reading →
It was her job to load the splitter, catch the split logs and pass them to the stacker. They developed a rhythm as they worked, stopping only to drink water or wipe sweaty brows. They enjoyed a sense of accomplishment, congratulating each other as the stack grew. The hard work earned them the beers they would enjoy on the deck that afternoon.
Logs with knots were tricky for the splitter. She’d learned that when a log doesn’t split all the way because of a knot, she could lift the log over her head and slam it down on the ground with all her might. The force would split the log in two.
Sometimes.
That trick didn’t always work.
Some logs were tougher than others. Continue reading →
By the end of the third full day of rain, we’d filled our Yahtzee pages and played enough Aggravation to understand how the game got its name.
We’d run through Oh, Hell and Cribbage, too. In a desperate move, I suggested Trivial Pursuit, even though I could clearly remember how the game was a yawn fest when I was a kid.
Jenny escaped to the garage to work on a project with grandpa.
Will, grandma and I dusted off the Trivial Pursuit box and pulled out the cards. It wouldn’t be long before we’d lose Will. We fumbled with questions like, “What team retired baseball player Stan Musial’s No. 6?” and “Who’s the barber in The Barber of Seville?”
It was Will’s turn. Continue reading →
