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I’ve Missed You
I spent the day panicking about deadlines and work past due. I sat staring at my blank computer screen, willing words to appear, when the message indicator pinged. It was an email from a childhood friend. Shelly was a strange child, by the neighborhood standards. She was quiet, arty, obsessively neat. She was blind in one eye and wore enormous glasses. My sister and her friends would have been more natural playmates for her. Shelly was their age, four years older, but for whatever reason she preferred my company....
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He Shall Be a Light
On the day after Thanksgiving my dad would disappear into the attic while I waited at the foot of the ladder for him to bring them down. One by one, I wiped the dust from their crowns. We had the full set in faded plastic, melted in spots from summer storage in the Louisiana heat: Mary, Joseph, three wise men, two sleeping sheep, a donkey with a saddle, and a Baby Jesus in a manger. We lit them with a long orange extension cord plugged into a socket on the side of our house. When we flipped the switch at twilight, I’d wait for my dad to go inside so he wouldn’t tease me....
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My First Universe
I want a bigger house. When we moved to our little cottage 18 months ago, it seemed perfect for a family of three. We didn’t think another baby was on the way, and anyway, an imagined baby and his paraphernalia took up a lot less space. Now that he’s a reality, our two bedrooms, one bath, and no closets are making me claustrophobic and irritable, and the idea of him sharing a room with his five year old sister, which I had once romantically thought would make them close, now seems like it will only result in two sleep-deprived kids. For now he lives in our bedroom, which means we’re locked out after 6:30 most evenings....
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We Collect Words
We’re in the six-month slump. I remember it well from the first baby. The euphoria wanes, the hormones settle, and the delightful newborn grows into an impatient dictator, waking ten times a night to nurse, ready to move and play but unable to do so unassisted, unhappy unless making direct eye contact with another human. There are days when I feel like I’ll never write again. Or shower. To complicate matters, our four-year-old sailed off the deep end sometime around last Monday....
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Deep Friends
Dave and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this October, sitting across from each other at our wooden dinner table with the long crack down the middle. In the candlelight, we gave up on conversation and watched our four-year-old as she delivered one of her surreal monologues. Occasionally we locked eyes, our expressions wondering at her, as they often do. Our five-month-old sat in his high chair, sweet potatoes in his eyelashes and hair. These are not the years of restaurant dinners, weekends away, expensive gifts. Our eyes said, may those years never come....
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Current Issue
Issue 72
Memoir by Lauren Winner, Poetry by James Harpur, Art by Guy Chase and Adrian Wiszniewski
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