Category: Nonfiction (Page 10 of 14)

Resolutions

1 February 2023 / Editor

Special Selection for one-year Anniversary Issue

Nonfiction by Heather Bartos

I go out for a run on the morning of New Year’s Day. There’s a fog advisory and everything more than ten feet away is blurred, a smudge, too far in the future to bother with. The things I can see are chilly and clammy and gray.

On the way back, once my three laps are done, I walk over to my garden. It’s not much more colorful than the rest of the neighborhood, a shush in a silent library. I make a halfhearted promise that I’ll plant those buttercup bulbs I bought in October later today if it doesn’t rain. Working out here doesn’t sound too appealing.

My plants aren’t stupid. They know this is the wrong time, that more cold and dark is coming, and that the proper and logical thing to do is roll back over and go to sleep until it becomes the right time. Their new year is a few months out yet, when the days lengthen and stretch and the soil warms up. The calendar date today means nothing to them.

Instead of lingering in bed, in their warm nests of blankets, the humans around me are ready to take on New Year’s resolutions. They are facing the gray skies with grit, with new gym memberships and steely purpose. They will wrestle time to the ground, pin it down, make it produce. The holiday feasting is done, the gifts are unwrapped, the decorations and lights are gone. There’s no cheery distraction, only the worship of discipline and sharp resolve, our egos feathered and puffed on full display, challenging ourselves.

The plants are probably wiser.

But I’m a human being, and I make resolutions. I take them seriously and make charts and boxes. And you know what? More years than not, I meet them.

“I’m growing taller this year than last year,” says the peach dahlia. “Really. I’m going to do it. Just watch.”

“I’ll make more buds this year,” says the lavender. “I’ve learned my lesson, being so close to the street during that last ice storm. Gotta plan ahead.”

“I think I’m going to hire than personal trainer and drop twenty pounds,” says the vine maple.

Of course, they are silent. They know not to make promises. They know that they are at the mercy of the weather, vulnerable to insects, dependent on the hummingbirds and the bees and the butterflies.

And so are the humans. We like to think it’s all about us, all up to us, our own striving and effort and conquests, as if time and the future are uncharted territories and all we have to do is conquer them and bend them to our will.

I can’t imagine subjecting my garden to the kind of discipline humans go through. I can’t imagine coming out here and screaming military chants at my tulips.

“Booyah! Man up and do it again!”

“Bloom faster, damnit! Hit the ground and give me twenty!”

There’s a cheering and encouraging that goes on out here on quiet afternoons and early mornings, but it’s one based on reverent observation, a parent watching their toddler learn to walk, listening as babbling becomes words.

And if we think it’s all up to us to sculpt this blobby future into something fitter, something more shapely, then it’s all on us when we don’t succeed, and that may not be true. If we take all the credit when we succeed, that only reinforces that we think we’re in charge instead of looking at how circumstances shaped either outcome.

We are not at the center, as much as we delude ourselves, pressure ourselves into thinking and wanting to believe otherwise. I can plant the buttercup bulbs, but a million little connections have to happen in order for them to grow, and I’m in control of very few of them.

Should we even bother to plant anything, then? Should we bother to make goals if so many other forces can interfere?

Of course we should. It’s our partnership with whatever creates us, whatever mysterious forces lead us forward. It’s our hand extended halfway, into the fog, where we can’t see what’s out there. But no plant ever bloomed because it was screamed at, starved, or otherwise subjected to extreme measures. Human beings are no different.

So I’ll go plant those buttercups. Even though I didn’t get to it yesterday because I was napping on the couch, I resolve I will do it today. I’ll extend a tentative hand out to whatever may want to hold it.

Heather Bartos has published essays in Fatal Flaw, Stoneboat Literary Journal, HerStry, and The Bluebird Word, and upcoming in McNeese Review. Her fiction has been in The Dillydoun Review, The Closed Eye Open, Tangled Locks Journal, and elsewhere, and won first place in the Baltimore Review 2022 Micro Lit Contest.

The Lamp in the Room

28 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Melissa Knox

The bell-shaped white lilies, stretching upward, concealing tiny light bulbs, charmed me. With the delicacy, though not the colors, of Art Nouveau, the lamp softened the room. There was a little white plug. I wondered why it wasn’t plugged in yet.

The furniture was white and mostly square, except for a small black leather sofa near the bed. Between it and the bed, a laminated white bedside table held my husband’s toiletries bag and plastic bottles of pills. The window, which didn’t open, looked out on the white, rectangular buildings of the university hospital. Beyond that, the road filled with pitched-roof German houses, tidy, so much neater than ours. From that road, I figured, he and I could walk to our house in six minutes. But he was never going to walk that road again.

“Oh, look at this pretty lamp!” I said, as the nurse wheeled him to his bed. He cast a blankly sad look at the lamp.

My husband knew what the lamp meant before I did. It didn’t charm him, I now think, because he’d correctly identified it. Where I just saw lovely design, he, raised Catholic, had seen many a virgin-and-child scene strewn with lilies, symbols of life after death. His tumor markers had vaulted up, after a few weeks of dramatic descent. His doctors couldn’t pull any more rabbits out of hats. A few days earlier, he’d had one last immunotherapy. The doctors said it had no side effects. My husband and I sat on his white bed and read the plastic bag listing the side effects, one of which was sudden death.

“It’s just death!” we joked. We spoke of the children and their triumphs, chatted about the one who’d gone vegan for a week and now demanded steak, discussed the wet spot in the left-hand corner of our guest room and how to repair it, held hands. “I couldn’t have asked for a better wife,” said my husband. What came out of my mouth was, “Please send a message to let me know you are okay.” I wished I could have taken that one back. It fell into the whiteness of the room.

The lamp was lit when I returned around one in the morning with my middle child. The room was white, but my husband was yellowing, his lifeless face looking surprised. He’d fallen forward so quickly he knocked over the nurse who was stabilizing his breathing. Just like that, what I knew would happen astonished me when it did—and now the white seemed the blankness of unknowing, the move toward “that undiscovered realm from which no traveler returns,” which we cannot describe—it’s white. Waiting for us to draw on when we get there? Or just nothingness? The room couldn’t tell me; the lilies gleamed—the lamp plugged in, the light shining.

Melissa Knox‘s recent writing appears or is forthcoming in Counterweight, Areo, Parhelion and ACM. Read more of her writing here: https://melissaknox.com

The Blur

22 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Joan Potter

Every day when I take off my glasses to brush my teeth, I see my blurry face in the mirror above the sink. I close my eyes before I start brushing so the mint spray won’t hit my sensitive eyes. But when I’m finished and put the glasses back on, the bathroom, the kitchen, the whole apartment is still fuzzy.

My eye condition, macular degeneration, was diagnosed three years ago, and is gradually getting worse; I know it can eventually lead to blindness. At two o’clock in the morning, when I tend to wake up awash in anxiety, I start thinking about what my life will be like as the blurriness, the distortions, the wavy lines and blind spots, keep getting worse. What if I can no longer read, or stream movies on my iPad? I wonder what people do all day when they can’t see.

I’ve been receiving treatment – regular injections into both eyes. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Searching online, I read about aids for people with what is called low vision. There are magnifiers of various sizes, voice-to-text software, text-to-voice software, and other devices I might have to use someday when my world gets foggier.

I try to avoid telling people about my diagnosis. When I do, I feel embarrassed, apologetic, and strangely ashamed. My sons know, of course. They drive me to the supermarket and Target and help me find things on the shelves. They watch me carefully when I’m walking with them to make sure I don’t trip over a bump that I didn’t see. I’ve told a few friends so they’ll understand why I can no longer drive to their houses or take long walks.

One of the first symptoms of this condition is the inability to make out faces of people seen from several feet away. It’s almost impossible for me to recognize acquaintances who are across a room or heading in my direction when I’m walking down the street.

Sometimes I see a friend, Lisa, coming my way. On warm days I know it’s her because she always wears a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing her many tattoos. But one day her sleeves reached her wrists. I didn’t wave and smile as this figure walked toward me; when we were face to face I explained why. Now, whenever I bump into her downtown, she comes really close to me and announces, “I’m Lisa.”

Two weeks ago, a smiling woman waved to me in the library parking lot. I responded with a tentative gesture but couldn’t figure out who she was until she had already driven away. A couple of days later I squinted at a man relaxing on a bench in the sun near my apartment building. I thought he might have been one of my favorite neighbors, but it was too awkward to approach him for a chat, in case he wasn’t.

So far, the worst experience was when I didn’t recognize one of my closest friends, a woman I’ve known for twenty-five years. She was walking toward me on a downtown street. From the little I could make out, she appeared to be happy to see me. Hers was a face I had looked at hundreds of times. And yet, she had to do what Lisa had done, stand close to me and say her name.

For days afterward, I was haunted by the scene. Not only that I couldn’t see her face, but that I imagined she saw me as pitiable, a version of myself – once energetic and independent – that I’ve been trying to conceal.

Joan Potter‘s personal essays have appeared in several anthologies as well as such literary journals as Persimmon Tree, The RavensPerch, Bright Flash Literary Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Stone Canoe, New Croton Review and others. She is the author of several nonfiction books.

orange leaf on chainlink fence — Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

The Leavings

17 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Susan Reese

I feel the days of parenthood creeping by, distant and unfulfilled. I hear the ticking of my children’s childhood clocks as that time passes forever by. Without a present and without a memory. These are feelings which fill my days and flood my heart with longing, the pain of separation and the melancholy of despair.
Lou Reese, #52760-080, 1992

You called late one night. You called every night, but it was unusual for you to call so late. After the kids were already asleep.

I was in our bed, exhausted from the day, finishing my tea and reading for a few minutes before turning out the light. That first year with you away in prison, it was hard to fall asleep.

We chatted about this and that. You had a new cellmate. Just arrived today. How was I holding up? Pretty good I guess. How was Beau’s sleepover with Orion last night? Fun. Uneventful.

I could tell there was another reason for the late-night call.

I closed my book and placed it on the bedside table. I turned off the lamp and lay on my back in the dark, holding only the phone, pretending you were lying next to me.

There was an awkward silence before you cleared your throat, lowered your voice, and said, “Susan, do you think it would be easier for the kids if you all stopped visiting me? Let them stay home, concentrate on school, their friends and having fun? Let them just pretend I’m away on a long business trip?”

My impulse was to comfort you, to say whatever I had to say to make you feel better, but my anger rose as I recognized your selfishness. I sat up and switched the light back on. Maybe that would be better for the kids, you’d said. My heart was racing as my eyes adjusted to the light. I was wide awake now.

How could you imagine our children not seeing you for three years? Hearing your voice from 800 miles away without seeing your face, or you theirs. Katie needing you for every precarious step from thirteen to sixteen. You were the most important male in her life. Beau needing you for the things I felt ill-equipped to handle. Sports, competition and before long, girls. And McKenzie—the baby. Needing you to be proud of her successes and your reassurance that she was not being disloyal having surrogate fathers for the first grade, father-daughter pancake breakfast and her first under the lights soccer game.

And me, needing you to be strong, to somehow manage to thrive. With the addition of everything else, were you willing to hand me the entire weight of parenthood for three years?

The longer we talked into the night, the easier it was for you to tell me the truth. I relaxed back into our bed and listened to you, my faraway husband.

“I don’t know if I can handle this, Susan. I’m ashamed, and I hate the kids seeing me this way.” Ashamed to be in the visiting room filled with strangers. The f***ing guards on red alert watching for a forbidden kiss between us. Ashamed of the count, having the kids watch as you line up subserviently with tattooed, long-haired inmates. Ashamed. “Every time you all come to see me, I don’t think I can stand it. When you all leave, I’m a total mess.”

Yes, the leavings hurt the most. Watching us walk away from you—off to the Comfort Inn as you head back to your dorm to climb up on your tiny top bunk, put your t-shirt over your face, and cry yourself to sleep. It would be easier for you to do your time on your own. Sure, probably. But at what cost to our kids? Not a price I was willing to have them pay.

Susan Reese is writing a book length manuscript dealing with the experience she and her family had when her husband, Lou, was incarcerated for three years. Writings include poems and essays written by Lou (the insider) and Susan (the outsider), reflecting the fact that the whole family was incarcerated.

The Rock Garden

10 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ron Theel

This time, I need a rock, not just any rock, but the right shape and size rock to finish the stone bench I’m making for my backyard. Usually, I find rocks easily. I forage the edges of farmers’ fields. I scavenge the curbs of newer-home neighborhoods, tracking my quarry, old stone leftovers from rebuilt patios and walkways. I bring these home like well-deserved trophies.

I’ve always appreciated stone, its beauty and durability. Things made from stone have simple lines and natural elegance. Stone endures without maintenance. No painting, staining, or waterproofing is required. I spent college summers working for a small company specializing in “stonescaping.” I learned how to use rocks and stones to beautify backyard landscapes by creating features such as waterless ponds and dry streambeds.

Today, I need Craigslist for help with the hunt. I scour headings like “free stuff” and “gardening.” That’s how I met Ilka. I saw her post, “landscaping rocks for sale, $20 each, your choice.” An email and text exchange later, I have the address and drive up to a small ranch-style home painted Easter-egg purple, nestled on top of a hill. Rocks surround her home and front yard. Tons of granite, sandstone, limestone, and more. Stacks of rocks line both sides of the driveway. The backyard is an overgrown field dotted with clusters of rocks like wild grapes waiting to be picked.

As I walk up the driveway, a woman approaches. She’s statuesque with timeless natural beauty: a tanned face framed by long, slightly graying, blonde hair, chiseled, high cheekbones, and turquoise eyes. She speaks in a deep voice, “I’m Ilka. I grow rocks in my yard. All kinds of them. They just pop through the ground like mushrooms after a spring shower. Let me know if you need help.”

I know where the rocks really come from. Ilka’s property rests upon drumlins, small hills of rocks and gravel deposited millions of years ago by receding glaciers. The alternate freezing and thawing of the ground during winter pushes new rocks to the surface every spring. I say nothing of this to Ilka. I’m sure she secretly knows that rocks cannot be grown.

It does not take long for me to find the perfect rock for the bench. It’s a large slab of limestone, beautifully imprinted with tiny seashells and fossils. Ilka helps me hoist the rock into the back of my SUV. “Come back in spring,” she calls. “I’ll have many more rocks.”

That night, I dream of Ilka, the Druid Queen. Ilka, the Earth Mother. I see her dancing and leaping across the yard, beneath a frosty autumn moon, weaving in and out of the rock piles. I hear her chanting an ancient runic rhyme, calling forth next year’s crop.

Ron Theel is an educator, mixed media artist, and freelance writer. His work has appeared in Lake Life and in the November 2022 issue of The Bluebird Word.

Faculty Recital

4 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Pama Lee Bennett

The college students straggle in, wearing shorts and graphic T-shirts. They no longer wear protective masks, nor do I. A teacher in jeans and a faded top posts a “quick response” code on the wall, and students crowd in to scan their attendance with their smart phones. I take a seat alone in the recital hall, on the aisle in the left section, where I will be able to see not only the featured flutist, but also my pianist friend’s hands as she accompanies her. The flutist, pretty, dark-haired, and unadorned in a black blouse and black trousers, enters the stage, followed by my blonde friend in a black, long-sleeved dress. They begin, and I lean forward slightly, listening, appreciative of the tone and skill of the flutist. It is my first concert in two years.

I enjoy the first several numbers: the “Andante Pastorale et Scherzettino,” by Taffanel; “Les Folies d’Espagne,” by Marias; the “Aria” by Dohnányi. The audience is still and attentive, the flute and my friend’s virtuoso piano filling the once-empty air. Even the unfamiliar tones of the Chinese variations, by Chen Yi, interest me. And then the flutist exchanges her soprano instrument for an alto flute, and they begin playing Arvo Pärt’s, “Spiegel im Spiegel,” and the low, slow, sustained notes reach deep into my being and bring me to tears. Missing pieces of my soul silently enter the room and tentatively float to where I am seated and hover above me, pieces that had left me behind when life became distanced and isolated.

Later, backstage, I hug my friend, and I am introduced to the flutist. I say how moved I was by “Spiegel im Spiegel.” She asks if I’ve ever heard an alto flute before. I say yes, once, at a master class given by the British flutist Trevor Wye. She exclaims, “I bought this flute from him!” I stare at her, then we smile. My missing pieces begin to fall gently back into place.

Pama Lee Bennett is a speech pathologist living in Sioux City, IA. She plays in a Renaissance recorder ensemble. She has taught at summer English language camps in Poland, and at a school there in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Bogg, Evening Street Review, Dash, and Tipton Poetry Journal.

The Gift

2 January 2023 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Cindy Jones

The brunch dishes lingered on the dining table. Clothes half-out of overnight bags and pillows lined the walls. Someone had cleared away last night’s wine glasses from the coffee table. Aaron Neville quietly sang “Please Come Home for Christmas.” I nudged two friends from their private patio conversation that it was time to come in.

He sat crossed-legged on the floor next to the tree, wavy hair the color of sunlit wheat and strawberries, locks falling into his eyes, wearing a too-small Santa hat and the softest red shirt, not bright enough to be crimson, not brown enough to be burgundy, it was carmine I think. I loved him in that shirt. He made jokes, called out names and passed gifts across the room to our daughter and friends, our hearts filled with laughter and the warmth of belonging.

That might have been our 15th Christmas or our 25th, they are a jumble in my head.

My hands moved the yarn over with the hook, and under and then pulled up a loop. I worked quickly through the simple repetitive motions, counting stitches as I sat alone in the radiation waiting room or rested in bed for months at home. The evidence of my obsession was a pile of crocheted scarves and wraps that threatened to collapse when I tossed on the latest one.

My daughter laid the old camping blanket down and slid the Douglas fir across the back seat. Through my rearview, its tip leaned out the open window, bending in the wind. I dreaded dragging up the ornaments from the garage and recounting the stories that went with each one. Christmas had abandoned me in a new house in a new town. What remained were gamma rays cooking me from the inside, my daughter leaving for her father’s house and me wandering the deserted hallways of my past, tripping over the shattered dreams and broken trust.

I walked down my dark hallway, pulled a new skein of yarn randomly from my basket and got back in bed.

“I made it safely Mom,” she texted, “I’ll miss you for Christmas.”

I pulled the covers higher and reached for my hook and yarn. Long lengths of gray drifted from light shades to dark, morphing into sections of carmine, and pops of yellow, warm as Christmas lights. I began to work, quickly and mindlessly at first and then the movements became slower and slower, and more deliberate.

The sensation wafted stealthily through my bedroom window, open even in December, settling in the middle of my chest before I could stop it, blanketing me like a newly fallen snow over the rage and devastation that festered inside.

I stilled my hands from the over-under, closed my eyes to the colors, quieted my mind from the counting, inhaled the sweet belonging that lived in me, and tasted the unexpected gift of grace.

Dear Louis, Today I am filled with the spirit of Christmas. I thought of you when I saw these colors.

After I wrapped the scarf in tissue paper and placed it in a small shipping box, I imagined his hand reaching in to lift it out, my note falling to the floor. I saw him raise his arms and slide it around his neck, brushing across his stubble to the small fine hairs on the back, as my lips used to do.

Cindy Jones is currently living her best life in Mazatlán, Mexico while navigating Stage IV cancer. She spends her days walking on the beach, enjoying live music, writing creative nonfiction and photographing the external world in ways that reveal our inner landscapes.

man hiking in snowy mountain — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Mount Kenashi

29 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Victoria Clayton

Dear Mount Kenashi,

Our journey together started years before I first met you in the winter of ‘16. It was our first-time being introduced and to be honest, I wasn’t particularly enamored by you. You seemed cold and aloof, mysterious, and strange. To get to know you seemed rather arduous. Other things sparked my interest more, the warm embrace of hot spring waters, easy on the eyes snow-covered landscapes and sweet tasting fruits – all much more charming and needing less effort on my part.

For a few days we brushed shoulders, caught on the edges of one another’s existence. To be honest, I thought you were slightly brash and coupled with my inexperience I found myself constantly tripping over myself around you. However, I will admit, we did have a few good runs together but nothing like how others gushed of you. After that brief encounter we parted ways, said our pleasant goodbyes and despite my best intentions I never really expected to see you again. It wasn’t love at first sight, or ride. And I left you, with some fond memories and large indifference; but still, I did promise to call you again, someday.

Years passed by and my desire to see you grew further from my mind. Then this summer, I met some people who knew you. They spoke of your wonder, your warmth, and I knew I had to see you again. Five years later, to the day I found myself in the exact same spot, but this time round, I decided that I would try and get to know you.

It started like any dream would with snowy skies and easy rides. Green fueled adrenaline rushed through my being, and I couldn’t get enough of you. I rose early every morning to come and be with you until the last hours of daylight slipped below the horizon. For a short while the smooth, effortless gliding through the uncomplicated terrain of a new love as light as the morning’s freshly fallen snow was all I needed.

That was, until we hit our first challenge. Everyone who witnessed our whirlwind thought we were ready. Oh, how wrong they were. Ill-prepared for this first confrontation, we ended free-falling down the side of a slippery slope with nothing under our feet to grip on to. The honeymoon had hardened, and your colder side was revealed. Feeling humiliated and hurt I stumbled back into the arms of an old companion and warmed my weary body in healing waters. The next day, persuaded to reconcile, we tried again to find a solution, but neither of us had changed. I walked away tired and bruised; I needed a break.

In our time apart, I dreamt of you every night, your softness, your serenity. In waking hours, I tried to distract myself from thinking of you yet always found myself back, lost daydreaming in old albums. Determined to make it work I came back to see you. This time there was no blizzard or storm just blue skies propping up the illusion of harmony. I still dared not to reapproach the path of where we both got lost. I just wanted to have fun with you again. So, we did, all while ignoring the elephant in the room or rather the tanuki on the mountain.

Victoria Clayton is an artist, writer and wanderer living and working in western Japan.

flight sky bird blue — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Parting Gift

27 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I cooked dinner for Dad in early December, warming up canned baked beans, cut up hot dogs and a little ketchup in a pot. The television news blared from the family room accompanied by Dad’s hacking cough. Dad took up smoking again after Mom, his wife of 62 years, died four years earlier. I pushed open a window to diffuse the constant stream of second-hand smoke but worried the cold air would chill him.

I’d given up on cooking anything other than dishes with hot dogs or ground beef—Dad considered pretty much everything else an extravagance. Individual bowls of iceberg lettuce served as my attempt at something healthy and green. I whipped up his favorite salad dressing, equal parts mayonnaise and ketchup.

I put our plates on the table and we took the same spots that we’d been sitting in since we’d moved to this house when I was five years old. Dad at the head, and me to his right. We missed having my mom at the other end and being surrounded by my sister and six brothers.

He spooned the goopy dressing over the beans mix and the salad, ate quickly and handed me his plate.

“Is there more?” he asked.

He’d weighed in at just 130 pounds at his last doctor’s visit. I wasn’t sure what he ate on the nights that I or one of my siblings were not at the house, and it made me happy to see him with an appetite and eating with gusto.

“Thank you for cooking,” he said. “I really like seeing you. I appreciate your coming.”

Dad said the same few sentences to me on each visit and not much else. His world had shrunk to the walls of his house and his memories of his wife, my mother.

Mom’s death disoriented him; he still cried every time I visited. He was so lonely but had little tolerance for visitors. He was even ready for me to leave after about 90 minutes, usually heading up the few stairs to his bedroom without saying goodnight.

He objected to any help. We’d forced a housecleaner on him and he refused to pay her. He sometimes smelled. He’d just begun using a walker after several falls, including one getting out of the sports car he’d bought at age 86, and he lay on the street as cars sped by until some man eventually stopped and helped him up. But every now and then he’d perk up.

“What’s that bird?” Dad asked after he’d taken his last bite of beans. I took a few steps to the freezer, hoping he’d enjoy the vanilla ice cream I’d brought.

What the heck was he talking about? I stared at him; even his eyes, deep brown with hazel highlights, seemed to have faded, filmy and dull.

“The one that people think brings babies?”

“A stork?” I asked and brought two bowls of ice cream to the table. “Do you mean a stork?”

“That’s it! I knew you’d know.” Dad beamed.

“When you were born, the nurse brought me to the nursery in the hospital. All these babies were in clear plastic boxes, lined up. On the wall behind them was a painting of this huge stork—that bird had the most incredible brown eyes. So big and warm and beautiful. The nurse pointed you out to me and I just stared. My girl had the same eyes. So beautiful. Do you remember me calling you Birdseye? Do you remember that nickname?”

I’d hated that nickname. My sister was Princess and I was Birdseye. The name was ugly. I was jealous of Princess. I wondered why my Dad called me Birdseye but never asked why. Questions weren’t much tolerated in our household.

This story had never been told. I was near 60 years old and Dad was 89. He shared this memory with so much love. He said so little these days, like every thought was difficult to pull out.

His story surprised me. I’d never considered that the name might be one of affection. Dad had an unpredictable temper and I’d often assumed that he found humor in being mean and teasing. And I’d shut down, cutting him out of many events of my life, and not sharing how I felt with him. Now I wonder how many times he and I misunderstood each other, blocking so much love that we might have shared.

I didn’t know that would be our last dinner together, or that hospice care would start for Dad in a couple of weeks, and that he’d die on December 27th. I am so grateful that this parting gift, the truth of the nickname, flew from him to me and I better know how much he loved me, right from the start.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction, and literary interviews. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, Pulse and has aired on public radio. She lives in Oakland, California.

snowman holding shovel — Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com

Snow Days

18 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Crystal McQueen

It’s been a long week with snow and ice imprisoning families in their homes. My teenagers lie abed as I trudge down the stairs on my lunch break. They should be the ones to shovel the snow, but I don’t wake them. I let them sleep.

Outside, the air is crisp against my face, and my breath puffs like tiny clouds. Basking in the joy of closed schools, half a dozen children take advantage of the slick street with their sleds. My kids haven’t used their sleds in years. They sit in the garage, gathering dust, but I don’t have the heart to give them away.

I smile at the little faces from behind my bundled layers, but they do not see me. Shrieks and laughter serenade me as I work. Ice has hardened beneath the powdery snow and sweat pours down my back long before the top layer of snow is cleared from my porch. I have to stop to stretch my back.

Other mothers sip their coffees, overseeing the raucous play as they chat and giggle. Envy tugs at me. Their kids are still young, and most of them are stay-at-home moms while I still have half a day of remote work left for me after I clear these steps. If I can clear these steps. The ice seems determined to thwart me.

My kids have to work tomorrow. If it isn’t done now, it will be waiting for me when it’s getting dark. Leaving the driveway under a sheet of ice isn’t an option. My kids won’t call off work. They don’t even like to request time off to do things they enjoy like vacations, parties and dates. I like that. It shows reliability, responsibility. Yet, here I am, shoveling while they sleep. The irony is not lost on me.

My neighbor, a firefighter, also chips at the ice on his driveway. He probably needs to work tomorrow too. The rest of the street remains dormant, willing to wait out the weather.

The firefighter’s wife, a mother of a girl and twin boys, calls to me.

“Hey, want to hear a funny story?”

I should get back to work. I need a shower, but I don’t want to be rude.

“Sure.”

“Is that your office up there?” She points to a second-story window facing her home. The children have stopped their play to listen, already giggling.

I frown and wonder where this is going. “Yes, it is.”

“Last night, I was giving the boys a bath, and my kid saw you through the window. He said, ‘Mom, look who’s Googling and drinking wine!’”

The kids burst into fits of laughter. The other moms smile at me with knowing nods.

I play along and give them a chuckle, even though I’m embarrassed. Somehow, a six- year-old boy caught a glimpse of me in a writing workshop, a search for who I might become in the next stage of my life, with a rare glass of wine. I seldom drink. The wine has to be really sweet, and the extra calories aren’t worth it.

I explain none of this as the moms cluster back in their circle, and the kids resume their play, grins still stretched across their rosy faces. Back inside, as I shed sweaty, snow-covered clothes in a pile by the door, I wonder if drinking and shopping online is what those kids think the strange lady-who-doesn’t-hang-out-with-their-moms does all day.

From my office window, I see the little ones surrender to the cold, one-by-one tromping back inside to the warmth of their homes until all that remains are the impressions of sled paths and tiny feet.

Hours later, my boys are well-rested and dressed. Even with their young, strong arms, we spend hours de-icing the driveway, scraping and shoveling until we feel like our backs might break. We are alone, toiling in the fading light, our clothes soaked in sweat.

We get takeout for dinner.

A week passes, and the soreness fades. I spend the day purging the papers in my office. For hours, I shred stacks of papers. Useless medical bills and bank statements, packets of elementary school report cards and quarterly attendance awards. Some go back two decades. My boys each peek into my office, their curiosity drawing them in. For a while, they sit on the floor next to me, folding their long legs into cross-cross-apple-sauce, as I work.

I treasure the time they choose to be with me and discuss their day with their deep baritone voices that are new and unfamiliar, but that I would recognize anywhere. This occurs less and less as the years pass. I try not to think about when they won’t be home anymore, but the thoughts press in anyway. It will happen gradually as if it might escape my notice. No more walks across the hall. Phone calls with occasional visits from college. Then, just birthdays and Christmases. Each passing day drawing them further into their own person. Into their own life. And, I will be there, encouraging them, supporting them where I can. But I won’t be there, all day, every day, watching, guiding, protecting. That won’t be my job anymore.

It is nearly dark when I cart three garbage bags filled with paper shavings across the lawn and into the trash barrel, and I wonder if the neighborhood children see this. I hope they do. Give their little voices something else to talk about. Maybe they will think I am a master criminal or a super spy. Let them imagine a more interesting grown-up life than late night intoxicated shopping. Let them enjoy crafting stories about mysterious adults while they are still safe in their little beds, and their moms watch over them.

Crystal McQueen lives in Northern Kentucky with her husband and two teenaged boys. Crystal attends EKU’s Bluegrass Writer’s Studio, pursuing her MFA and has work in The Writing Disorder and borrowed solace. A passion for adventure and love for her family acts as her inspiration. For more information, visit crystalmcqueen.com.

Category: Nonfiction (Page 10 of 14)

Resolutions

Special Selection for one-year Anniversary Issue

The Lamp in the Room

The Blur

The Leavings

The Rock Garden

Faculty Recital

The Gift

Mount Kenashi

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