Essay Daily: Talk About the Essay: July 10: Kelly Caldwell • Dave Mondy • Lawrence Lenhart • Elizabeth Boquet • Amber Carpenter • Kat Moore • Donald Carr • Sonja Livingston • Cindy Bradley • Elizabeth K. Brown

Today we present ten more dispatches from June 21, 2018 to you. More details on the project here, but, in brief, we asked you to write about what happened on one day in June, and are publishing the results, largely unedited, for the next month and change, roughly ten a day. If you wrote something (it's not too late!), send us your work via this submission form by July 12 (it's okay if you didn't RSVP before: the more the merrier).

—The Editors

July 10: Kelly Caldwell • Dave Mondy • Lawrence Lenhart • Elizabeth Boquet • Amber Carpenter • Kat Moore • Donald Carr • Sonja Livingston • Cindy Bradley • Elizabeth K. Brown

KELLY CALDWELL

Overnight, someone left three fat softballs in the dog run in Tompkins Square Park, and this morning, the dogs are delirious with joy. A few skirmishes break out, but for the most part, the dogs just play. They tug-of-war, and take turns “losing.” They catch a softball and then coyly entice one another to chase. They race back and forth in pairs or clumps of three, shoulders bumping, fetching and catching, til all of their long, pink tongues are drooping out the sides of their mouths.
In New York City, people avoid eye contact and don’t talk much to one another in public spaces, but in the Tompkins Square Park dog run, on early weekday mornings, it’s different. We talk. We know each other’s names, not just the dogs’. Usually, we move around, following our dogs, sipping hot drinks and chatting with whoever we’re nearest to.
Today, though, we’re knitted together at one end of the run. The only thing on anyone’s mind is the news: More than 2,000 migrant children separated from their parents at the U.S. borders. It’s a firestorm that’s been raging for four days. We ruminate over the details: The audio released on Monday by ProPublica—seven minutes of children wailing, calling for Mami or Papa, and one clear, small voice repeating her aunt’s phone number again, and again. The ever-shifting and inadequate attempts by Administration officials to justify the policy. The lawsuit revealing that some children were subdued with powerful psychiatric drugs.
We pause for a moment. A dissonance hangs over us, between the comic antics of our dogs and the heaviness in the air.
It’s the stupid, pink dog dish all over again, I’m thinking.
Three days ago, in my Advanced Memoir class, we talked about the subjective lens of the narrator, and a passage from Story Genius by Lisa Cron: “After all, we know from personal experience that when something genuinely horrid is going on, it’s always with us, no matter how much we pretend it isn’t. It not only filters everything we see, it tells us what to look for.”
No matter what is happening in the scene, I told my students, you have to get the deeper emotion onto the page. The examples I gave were comparatively low-stakes: how after your first break-up, just buying your morning bagel was searing and poignant because it was your first break-up bagel.
The example I did not give, but that I was thinking about, was of another morning in Tompkins Square Park, nine months earlier. My dog Pops and I had left the run, and stopped near the rose bushes so I could give him a drink before heading home. While I pulled out a water bottle and a hot pink collapsible dog dish from my bag, I was listening to NPR report that, in the wake of Hurricane Maria, more than half the people in Puerto Rico didn’t have clean water. In desperation, Puerto Ricans had reopened wells that were closed because of superfund-level contamination; they were drinking water mixed with untreated sewage. Water-borne diseases were breaking out, and health officials were worried about cholera.
Puerto Rican men, women, and children are at risk of cholera, I thought, and I’m pouring filtered water into a pink, plastic dish for my dog.
I’m not apologizing for watering a thirsty animal. That’s my responsibility. It is also someone’s responsibility to bring clean water to Puerto Rico.
That was October, and still, every time I pull out that stupid pink bowl, I remember it. I’m thinking about it again, this morning, as Pops and I leave the run and I take out the dish. Thankfully, I’m interrupted, because we bump into Kate, a work colleague and a poet. She and I are both a bit sheepish at first, because she’s in workout clothes and I’m in grubby dog run clothes, but we get over it pretty quickly, partly because Pops is mugging and wriggling for her attention, but also partly because we’re genuinely delighted to see each other. “I can’t believe we’ve lived this close to each other all this time!” she says.
That’s another thing I love about this park. In the heart of Manhattan’s East Village, it’s a magnet that draws in everyone. As Kate and I chat, there’s a teenage girl, possibly a runaway, panhandling for change, while nearby, parents in expensive suits and shoes lead backpack-laden kids to the bus stop. An older Hispanic man wheels a giant speaker past us—he’s a fixture here. He’ll set up near the basketball courts and blast salsa music for hours. The benches are all dotted with people in coveralls or khakis or sapphire blue blazers, eating egg sandwiches, drinking coffee, and scrolling on their phones, a few moments of quiet before heading to work.
At my work, it’s a day of meeting, talking, and teaching. I interview a teaching candidate who wrote and illustrated a charming and funny picture book about a mouse and a chipmunk fighting over an acorn. Lesson? Learn to share. One of our interns wants to write an op-ed about the treatment of women in the music industry, and we work together to develop her ideas. I trade emails with my friend and fellow teacher Mary, who I haven’t seen since April, when she got hit by a car. She gives me an update on her shattered leg, and I tell her how much everyone at the office misses her.
I’m running late to dinner, but I take a big, blue CitiBike down the Hudson River Parkway anyway. I don’t want to risk being even later because of a subway delay, but also, I want to take in the sunset. I’m not the only one with that idea—the paths are crowded with New Yorkers jogging and strolling and biking, and I have to pay extra close attention, because everyone’s eyes are trained on the river. Tonight, the sunset really is that beautiful.
Dinner is a celebration. After two years of working in DC, our friend Indrani found a great job back home in New York City, and she and her wife Dina are finally living under the same roof again. They got married last August and after their honeymoon, they rode separate trains to separate homes. Commuter relationships put a strain on both partners, and though Dina and Indrani handled it well, my husband and I could see it wearing on them. You can acknowledge your privilege all day long—we’re lucky we can afford two apartments, they’d say; we’re lucky to have such great support, they’d say—but when you’re exhausted because you got up at 4a.m. to take a three-hour train ride to work, you’re exhausted. When you yearn for someone, you yearn for them.
Kent and I are thrilled that this separation is over, and selfishly, we’re thrilled that we’ll get to see our friends more often now. Indrani’s office is not far from mine, and we talk about meeting for lunch or after work in Bryant Park, a swath of green behind the New York Public Library, the branch with the stone lions.
When our drinks come, we raise our glasses and all four of us toast at once. “Welcome home, Indrani!” I say. “Here’s to good friends and more good times together,” Dina says. “Well done, Indrani,” Kent says.
Indrani chimes in last. “Here’s to being together,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.
It brings everything to a screeching halt, and for one long moment, we gaze at one another, anguished. We will carry on with our celebrating, but all evening, thrumming beneath everything, is one, insistent thought: It’s not a privilege, being with the people you love. Or, it shouldn’t be.
At home, Kent and I find that Pops has soiled the living room floor. After more than two years of good behavior, he’s insulted the rug three times in just the last week. It’s been a busy week, and Pops has been home alone a little more than usual. “He might be a bit too accustomed to having you around,” I say to Kent as we clean up.
But secretly, I sympathize. When your people are missing, you’ve got to do something.

—Kelly Caldwell

Kelly Caldwell teaches creative nonfiction and is dean of faculty at Gotham Writers Workshop.

DAVE MONDY

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—Dave Mondy

Dave Mondy's essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays 2015 and 2017, Best American Sports Writing 2017, and have appeared in Best Food Writing 2014 and 2015. He has also received multiple Solas Awards for his travel writing. His work can be found in Slate, The Iowa Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The University of Arizona, and he's currently working on a book about the true stories and strange truths hidden within famous sports photos. www.davemondy.com

LAWRENCE LENHART

I peek over the wife-shaped hump in the bed, see the baby monitor lit green. Our eleven-month-old son is standing in his crib, his fingers curled around the rungs. We had decided the night before that I would be the one to wake with him this morning.

THINK

This is a good system, deciding on these sorts of things the night before as it prevents the kind of pleading, arguing, groveling that happened during the first months (e.g., “I did it the last two days. Will you get him today?” “I didn’t get to bed until late. I need more sleep.” “I fed him twice last night. Will you please step the fuck up?”).

I alternate between sleepy eyes as I change his diaper, throw it in the pail, remind myself I need to change the bag SOON.

In the kitchen, I make a bowl of cereal for myself (Trader Joe’s Vanilla Almond) and prepare a goblet of Cheerios (no milk) for Milo. That’s my son.

I set him on the floor in the living room and surround him with his favorite toys. He smiles at me like he’s just hit the jackpot. Like he might be spoiled. I turn on The Vietnam War. I’m only 6.5 hours into the 18-hour Ken Burns documentary.

THINK

I am watching it because 1) it’s summer and I have the time; 2) it fits into my ritualist disenchantment process with America; and 3) my wife just discovered (through Ancestry.com) that she has a half-Vietnamese uncle. Apparently, her grandfather had an affair during the war. After some encouragement from his Amerasian friends, her half-uncle signed up for an Ancestry account and discovered his half-sister (my mother-in-law).

THINK

There’s this one thread that’s not working concerning Denton Crocker Jr. (aka Mogie). I see what Burns is trying to do with his story, and maybe that’s the problem. It’s a Stalinesque maneuver: a single death is a tragedy/a million deaths is a statistic. Oh, wait: spoiler alert.

I look up the wonderfully mimetic word ‘loblolling’ after a Vietnam veteran uses it to describe bombs descending toward the earth, toward his platoon.

Milo has recently been fascinated with a martyoshka-style book. There are ten cubes total, and the walls of each cube are illustrated (with a snake, a saguaro, a cactus wren).

THINK

I worry that if he gnaws the smallest one too much, he will deface it beyond recognition and I won’t remember what it says when he’s verbal and asks, “What did it use to say?”

I take a picture of each side of the cube just in case. Milo crawls away, and I pull him back by his leg. He crawls away again, and I pull. He cracks up.

Milo and I take the tortoise to the backyard. I fill his bath with water from the hose. I admire the bath that I’ve created. It’s an inverted RV skylight filled with landscaping rocks, positioned in a dry stream in the backyard.

THINK

I worry there is too much pine pitch in the bath. I think I read tortoises can die if they ingest sap.

The tortoise excuses himself from the bath and begins wandering through the yard. I hoist Milo to the bells we’ve hung from branches in the tree. We walk from bell to bell. I call it Bell Walk (a pun after Sedona’s Bell Rock). I ask him if he remembers when we bought these bells at Byodo-In Temple in Oahu. These at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. These in—I don’t remember where we got these.

My wife wakes up. I give her a kiss. She wrinkles her nose in resistance because she hasn’t brushed her teeth yet. While she feeds Milo, I go for a run. I run across the cul-de-sac, down the mulch trail to the paved trail, along the paved trail past the park and into the designated “open space,” which is a ponderosa meadow. I cross the road to the trail’s extension (1.0 mile), all the way to the airport (1.74 miles). I turn around, facing the mountain now, and do my best to negative split. My IT band begins hurting, a years-old injury that I can’t seem to overcome. I check my time at the 5K (a sluggish 26:31).

THINK

While running, I start daydreaming about when I used to run in high school. I think about our rivals, Latrobe High—alma mater of Arnold Palmer and Fred Rogers. I wonder if their coach was really as shrewd as we made him out to be. It’s the coach’s responsibility to walk the visiting team all around the 3.1-mile course before the meet. I am remembering the time he gave us the wrong directions. I turned right and had to backtrack, which cost us the match. We assumed he did it on purpose, but maybe he didn’t. I think I am finally coming to peace with this defeat now, twelve years later. It is as cathartic as it is pathetic.

I finish the run. On a boulder at the end of my driveway, I sit and analyze the splits on my running app.

We leave the house as a family. Go to coffee, lunch, the playground, Walgreen’s. We need to kill two hours while the cleaners do their thing.

META

(oh yeah, I forgot: I went to the bathroom once at the concert too…) Have you ever seen the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where a receptionist [Chacha] in Larry David’s office building counts the frequency with which he uses the restroom?

“Come check this out,” I call for Andie from the bathroom. She enters dubiously. I point at the end of the toilet paper. It’s folded into a triangle. “Did the babysitter do this?” I ask. “Now that was cleaners,” Andie says. And then almost immediately: “Aww, that means the babysitter didn’t use the bathroom the whole time we were gone.” We both laugh at that.

We talk in bed, each of us taking turns yanking the concert wristbands off. Apropos nothing, my wife falls asleep while telling me about her first orgasm. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask. Then, she says it was during her first night of babysitting. “I was very young,” she said, almost nervously. It was on a couch after the kid went to bed.

THINK

Not that I was really trying to, but I can’t picture our babysitter masturbating. I congratulate myself on a failed imagination.

“Andie?” I ask. “Andie?” again. She is sleeping. I scroll through my charging phone, realizing I’ve recorded too much of my day, that I’ll inevitably have to leave a lot out.

OUTTAKES

Descendents’ “Suburban Home”—ironic or not?

Pause Bachelor to stare at infographic on suicide rates.

Dave Rawlings (who plays with Gillian Welch). I’d like to look like him when I’m older. Great autograph.

Fifteen minutes wasted practicing time signatures on my knee—5/4 is fun

I’ve never had to fire someone per se, but I did have to kick a bass player out of my punk band in high school. (Sorry, Geoff!)

My car’s corrective driving makes me a less retaliatory driver, but gives me cognitive dissonance.
Before they’re sentences, these notes feel like a bloated Jason Bredle poem.

—Lawrence Lenhart

Lawrence Lenhart holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. His essay collection, The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage, was published in 2016 (Outpost19). His prose appears in Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is a professor of fiction, nonfiction, and climate science writing at Northern Arizona University and a reviews editor and assistant fiction editor of DIAGRAM.

ELIZABETH K. BROWN

What Happened on June 21, 2018: brain-eating amoeba, commitment, and left-over burgers

Mornings are sometimes tense between Adam, and me. Adam is my fiancé. [1] Adam thinks my morning routine takes too long. His morning routine is to wake up and immediately take a shit, then proceed from there. My morning routine follows: pee, scrape tongue, brush teeth, nasal irrigation, eye drops, splash face with water. Because we only have one bathroom, I’m often forced to complete my morning routine at the kitchen sink. I use a purple ceramic neti pot filled with water that is initially filtered through a Big Berkey water filtration system, and a quarter teaspoon of uniodized Morton’s Salt. [2] (Distilled water is recommended to avoid introducing bacteria and brain-eating amoeba to my nasal passages, where these bacteria and brain-eating amoeba can live and cause potentially fatal infections, but I don’t use distilled water. [3])
To avoid having to use the kitchen sink, I try to get out of bed a few minutes before Adam and take care of my business before he gets out of bed and insists on the need to take care of his. If I miss this small window of opportunity, I do small chores around the house. This morning, Adam was up first and so I put away the laundry that had been hanging for days on three separate drying racks in our living room. After he was finished, he lit the lilac and hyacinths candle that sits on the back of the toilet. [4] But, even with the candle, I continued to pace around the house with my toothbrush poking out of my mouth instead of returning to the bathroom to brush my teeth in the steamy-from-the-shower, lilac-imbued stink of our small bathroom. [5]
After the pacing, I completed my routine and we convened in the kitchen. In the kitchen, at approximately 7:30a.m., I suggested (not for the first time) that Adam see a therapist. As you can imagine, this was a fantastic way to start to the day for both of us.

Me: “I know you think that we’re having a hard time because we’re both in stressful situations and that it will all get better once work quiets down for you, but the reality is that if things go as we talk about wanting them to go in our Five Year Plan—both of us starting graduate school, buying a house, having babies, getting married, all that—this is only the tip of the iceberg.” [6]

Me: “Especially the whole baby thing. Just imagine all of this going on between us if we were only ever allowed to get two or three consecutive hours of sleep for months on end? Imagine it. Imagine!!!” [7]

Me: “Don’t you think things have been better between us since I started seeing a therapist again?”

Me: “I love you and I think it would be better for us if you also had a stronger support network, or at least started to cultivate that now. I know you talk about not having that since moving to St. Louis, but from what you’ve told me, you haven’t really had the kind of support I’m talking about, and that you deserve, ever. Would you agree with that?”

Me: “Does that resonate with you? Does what I’m saying resonate with you?” [8]

Me: “When you glance at your watch when I’m in the middle of sharing something with you, I feel like you’re not listening.”

Me: “What I need from you is for you to communicate with me if you’re getting anxious about time. Okay? See, there’s another example of something I learned in therapy, or sort of. Actually, that was just yoga school.”

Me: “What do you mean what am I talking about? The When you ______ , I feel ______ , what I need is ______ formula. Oh, really? Well, we can talk about it tonight.”

Me: “I still have the names of the therapists my therapist gave me when I asked her for recommendations for you a couple of months ago. But that was when I wanted to stop having to break things down for you about what I was going through with all the sexual stuff. This is different.”

Me: “Please stop looking at your watch.”

Me: “Have you heard back from your Aunt Nancy yet about driving to Dayton this weekend? I need to know so I can see about getting someone to cover my shift on Sunday. Do you want me to go along?”

Me: “What’s different is that I don’t feel crazy. I’m not crazy!”

Me: “No, I’m not going to send the names of the therapists unless you ask me, so don’t say, “If you want to send them.” This is about what you want. I’m just trying to be clear about what I want and what my needs are.”

Me: “You know when I’m angry that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

Then, he left for work.

I had the day off. I had a lot of things on my list of things to do. I only accomplished a few of them, and not even the highest priorities. When Adam returned home for lunch, I was angry at him for the way our morning began and the way this beginning impacted me and my state of mind—and, therefore, my productivity. All morning, I had the apartment to myself. It was quiet but for the buzzing of the neighbors’ air conditioning compressors, so easily heard through the single-pane windows at all times. After Adam left for work, I made myself pancakes and slathered them with butter and grape jelly and a scoop of Greek yogurt. I ate the pancakes while reading the contributor’s notes and correspondence sections for the March or May issue of The Sun Magazine. It was a very pleasant hour.
Then I moved slowly down the list of things to do. I made several calls to United Healthcare and the orthopedic office at the Barnes-Jewish hospital in go in order to try to figure out how much it would cost me out-of-pocket after insurance to get an MRI (a lot), a call to the dentist to confirm my appointment for a six-month cleaning (feeling on top of things), wrote an email to a friend about the “What Happened on June 21, 2018” project (with a commitment to participate), and made a few changes to and comments on my sister’s cover letter and resume (much easier to get into than working on my own resume). I put the dishes away from last night’s dinner and did dishes from breakfast. I practiced yoga with the guidance of an audio recording and did my physical therapy exercises. And finally, I wrote out my work schedule for next week in my planner. [9] I stared at the weeks and months that make up the rest of the summer. They seemed spent already.
Around noon, Adam came home for lunch. He works only a few blocks away and so often comes home for lunch. He works for the city and his office is on the fourth floor with a view, in an old octagonal building that was originally built to house a women’s magazine in—I’ll look up the year later, but I think it was the early 1900s. When he came home and poked his head in the “office” (my bedroom) to ask if I wanted any eggs, I tried to ignore him. I carried on emailing my friend as if I were doing important work.
“No thank you,” I said, still staring intently at the screen. He made himself some eggs and the kitchen had that fishy smell from burning olive oil in the cast iron skillet. When he was done cooking, I went to the kitchen and started to make myself lunch: a salad with strawberries, green onions, a lemon garlic dressing, chopped pecans, and shredded parmesan. As I spun greens in the salad spinner, he walked in with his plate in hand to eat at the butcher block. He was trying to spend time with me.
“How was your day so far?” I asked. I was trying to be cool, or at least to avoid “getting into things” again. But all he said was, “Fine.” Okay, I thought, so that’s what we’re doing. Pretty soon, we were back to the question of whether or not we’re “on the same page” in our house hunting search and who’s leading the way in terms of the “authentic communication” we both talk about wanting.

Adam: “I’m sorry about the house. I just wasn’t ready to make a decision so quickly.”

Adam: “Is there never a time that you feel like I also contribute to honest communication?”

Adam: “I’m trying really hard. I feel overwhelmed.”

Adam: “Yes, I am. Every day that I go to work I’m working toward our future family together!”

You can probably imagine my side of things. We stood in the kitchen hugging for a while. I tried to kiss him, but he went for my forehead instead.
This morning, when he went to leave on his bicycle, he didn’t say, “I love you.” He just said, “See you later.” I followed him to the door and said, “I love you,” sort of angrily. I didn’t want to deal with feeling guilty for leaving on a bad note if he were to get hit by a car and become brain damaged or paralyzed on the way to work. [10] He relented and said, “I love you, too.” I think it’s okay to say it even when you aren’t necessarily feeling it. I do this all the time with my family. I think maybe we were trying to connect in the kitchen after lunch so that “I love you” would come more naturally when he left again.
After our brief embrace, he told me about some work stuff and I complained about the cost of health care in the U.S. I reported back to him some of the horrors I’d heard on NPR that morning. And then he put his helmet on and left for work and I got back to my important emails to friends.

I got to my therapist’s office at 3:30 even though my normal slot is 2:30. We scheduled this one for 3:30 because I asked if I could get a later slot now that I’m working Thursday mornings. Today (Thursday) was the only day she could do 3:30, so we scheduled it. But then I didn’t get scheduled for work today. When I arrived at 3:30, she said she’d been expecting me at 2:30. However, instead of apologizing profusely and insisting I must have been the one who got mixed up, I said what I knew to be true, which was that we’d scheduled it for 3:30 weeks ago. As it turned out, she had 45 minutes until her next client, so I stepped over her dog, Herbie, and sat down in the recliner.
I was sort of hoping, when she said she had been expecting me at 2:30, that she wouldn’t have time and I wouldn’t have to stay. I’d been taking a nap before driving over and wasn’t really feeling like talking. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk about. I’ve actually been feeling sort of hopeful about things for a couple of days, maybe more like 36 hours. And it’s been really nice. I thought going to therapy might ruin the nice, hopeful feeling. [11]
For the entire session, I talked about Adam. I told my therapist all the details about the house we had looked at last Friday and about the way he’d resisted my intuition and put up a wall. I told her how these things had really pissed me off. I said I was still attached to the idea of the house, which someone else put an offer on immediately upon viewing, which is what I would have liked to do, and the seller accepted it before we even had a chance to put one together. Adam wanted to sleep on it. I told him, “We can’t sleep on it with the market the way it is!” I said this as if I were a realtor or had any real understanding of “the market.” All I knew was that I had written to the realtor the week before that what I (we) really wanted was something grandma had lived in for 50 years and then the universe gave us exactly that. The woman selling the house had lived in it for 52 years and had just moved out of state to be closer to family. And here’s the real kicker, the sign from the divine that we were meant to put in an offer immediately and not “sleep on it”: the grandma’s last name was Brown.
My last name is Brown.
And Adam’s last name is Brown.
And we’re not even married yet. It’s just coincidence that we have the same last name. [12]
So, obviously, this was a sign. I was sold on the place—big, dry basement (for him to play music) with a finished bathroom (bonus); big yard with enough sun for a big garden; on a cul-de-sac (with children playing in the street = instant friends for my niece and nephew when they visit); and the price was right. But Adam didn’t want to hear it. All he could see was the carpet and wallpaper and huge ornate dining room set. He was anxious about being late to dinner with friends and didn’t want to go over the details of the contract even though I had my notebook and pen out and was taking notes as we re-capped things with our realtor. He wanted to sleep on it and talk about it the next day, even though I had to work at 7:00 the next morning and had already explained to him that I wouldn’t be available to discuss anything until the evening, which would probably be too late. And so, we went to dinner. And we didn’t get the house.
I told all of this to my therapist, who doesn’t usually hear too much about my current life but instead hears a lot about my childhood and the many questions I have about my childhood. She said my energy was different and that she thought it was because I was talking about issues that were grounded in the present and not in the past. I guess that’s a good thing. Present. Not past.
People keep telling us that purchasing a home is one of the most stressful things for a couple. I keep telling Adam that he should trust me more because I’m naturally a more practical person. He keeps telling me that he just needs more time because it’s a big decision. All this desire for more time makes my therapist wonder if the two of us aren’t quite ready for commitment. People keep asking us if we have a date set and I give the same line about how I didn’t want to be looking at venues for a reception and tent rental companies when I was supposed to be finishing my thesis for graduate school in the spring. Or I say that Adam’s starting grad school in the fall and I’m planning to start (another program) in the spring, so the earliest we’re thinking is next summer or fall. Sometime. Maybe a year from now. Who knows! Or else I say that we don’t have any money, which isn’t not true. Or that we’re trying to buy a house, which maybe isn’t true after all.
My therapist asked some questions that resonated: Are you sure you’re ready to buy a house together? Are you sure you’re both ready for that type of commitment?
Me: “Well…we might just put it in Adam’s name because we haven’t combined finances. I can’t imagine doing that! Super scary. I’ll just sort of pay him rent. And if I help out with household projects and renovations, we’ll figure out a way to make that fair for me. I’ll get a stake in the property, or he’ll take some agreed upon amount off the top of my rent that month. So really, it’s not that big of a commitment. We just want to stop paying our slum-lord-y landlord rent. And I really want a yard so I can have a garden.”
Of course, then the therapist asks if I’m sure I want to get married, with all this talk of paying him rent and making things fair. I have a ring on my finger, but the truth is, I’m not sure. And neither is he. Is anyone ever totally sure? [13]
From the beginning, I told Adam I wouldn’t marry him until he was out of debt. And that I wouldn’t have kids with him until at least one of us had a stable income. [14] And that health insurance would be good. Just a few months ago, for my 31st birthday, he tucked a printout of his credit card statement into a birthday card. It had a $0.00 balance. Happy Birthday, honey. I paid off my credit card! I guess now my “yes” is now more official than it was when he pulled the ring out of his sweatpants pocket in front of City Hall on our walk home from the library last September.
Anyway, it’s been three and a half years since we met, and we’ve been living together for about three of those and engaged for, I guess, about nine months. I’m on his insurance plan through work, but I pay him for it. We share a car (really, it’s mine) and a phone plan, split according to use. We split bills and groceries. [15] Here’s what my therapist wanted to know: Did Adam’s hesitation to purchase the $75,000 starter home of our dreams have a deeper meaning? And her questions led me to my own line of questioning: Is my dharma to bake lemon bars for my fiancé’s office co-workers and create a detailed filing system for all of our shared accounts and household projects (user manuals, car insurance statements, notes on construction loan products we might look into)? Or should I be focusing on my writing and the evening writing classes I keep talking about putting together to teach and job applications so that I can stop waitressing? In other words, should I be focusing on my own life? On “me” instead of “we”?

After therapy, I went to Starbucks to write down what happened, something I do most weeks. [16] I ordered an iced chai latte and texted back and forth with my sister for a while, then located the graduate course I plan to take in the fall in the course catalog and noted the time. I started another “to-do” list for tonight, which had “What Happened on June 21, 2018?” at the top. [17] Then I went across the street and purchased the pair of running shoes I’d placed on hold last week because I’d wanted time to think about the decision before committing to the $93.75 investment. It started to rain.

By the time I went for a run it was after 8:00p.m. and significantly cooler than it had been here for days. It was a chilly 75 degrees, or thereabouts. While running, I thought about my grandpa’s daily diaries. My maternal grandfather kept a daily diary for years. The first one began as a joint effort. He and my grandma commemorated the day of their wedding, June 2, 1956, with an inaugural diary entry. I wonder now, was the daily diary a wedding gift from someone? Perhaps my great Uncle Claire, who was a writer. [18] After a while, my grandma’s handwriting fades away, but my grandfather continued to record each day’s events for years on his own. Of course, finding an entry for 1958 or 1968 would be ideal (for a nice, round number), but I don’t have those diaries on hand. As far as I know, they’re located in my Aunt Laura’s basement. But what I do have is the actual diary from 1956.
The details of their day on June 21, 1956 are in my grandfather’s squat handwriting, easy to tell apart from my grandmother’s neat, right-leaning script. The entry reads,

We drove to New Providence last night to my folks, and got there near ten. We went into Eldora this morning, where I saw Dr. Nyquist. He said I was OK, and time would make me more peppy. Later, we went to Marshalltown and ordered another Hide Away bed from Mr. Cox, plus two chrome steel yellow cushioned kitchen chairs. We looked at washing machines on our way home. In the evening, we saw the Deep River Softball girls beaten by one run at Wellston.

Added later are the prices of the items. $169 for the Hide Away bed. $6.66 for the chairs, though it’s unclear if that was per chair or altogether. These are the notes of two newlyweds preparing for their conjugal home.
Twenty-nine years and 364 days later, on June 20, 1986, after a six-month battle with leukemia, my grandma died. My grandpa’s entry for that day reads,

Elizabeth died at 9 p.m. today. She had been breathing heavily and had been on oxygen all day. She passed peacefully. I was holding one hand and Julie and Sheilah were holding the other hand. Connie and Colleen had been up earlier—also Laura, Mark and Alisa. [19]

One year later, on June 21, 1987, I was exactly two months old my grandfather recorded his visit to the Quaker meeting house he regularly attended, and the genealogy work he accomplished that day. It’s disappointing to find that the entry for this day, 31 years ago, isn’t one of the many in which he comments on how proud he was to show me off at the courthouse, where he was the County Supervisor, or makes note of my overall health. Those are the types of entries I enjoy. [20]
I didn’t remember to call my mom and ask how she was doing yesterday, on the anniversary of her mother’s death. I don’t always remember to do this, but, in recent years, I’ve been making an effort. I don’t know what it would have felt like to lose my mother at age twenty-one, and I don’t know what it would have meant to have a baby at twenty-two. I’m thirty-one now and I’m not sure I’ll know what it’s like to have a baby at all.
On my run, I took a route I hadn’t taken for a while. It was a beautiful summer evening and for once not too hot, and I saw a total of one person in their yard. The only other people out of doors were the orange-vested energy company workers for Spire.

For dinner, Adam and I had leftover hamburgers from a grill out earlier this week. Adam made basil-mayonaisse with basil from our porch box, but he over-blended it so that it was watery. It looked pretty disgusting, but I put it on my burger anyway. I had a brownie and ice-cream for dessert. The small white bowl I ate out of is still sitting next to me on the coffee table. It’s one of a set of three I scored a few months ago from Goodwill. Handcrafted Cabana porcelain. It’s the exact size of half a grapefruit. Adam has fallen asleep on the other couch with a book laid open on his chest. It looks like he’s about a quarter of the way through the latest Naomi Klein book; something about “NO” is all I can see in the title from here. I’ve stayed up two hours past my goal bedtime of ten p.m. to record all of this. Perhaps one day my descendants—if I have any, if I am not first infected by a brain-eating amoeba—will be as interested in what I had to say about today as I am in what my grandfather had to say about every day for the years he kept a daily record. Or perhaps not. As of five minutes ago, Central Standard Time, June 21, 2018, is over.

I wish the word fiancé didn’t sound so pretentious. It’s not that I think all French words are pretentious, just that saying “fiancé,” which is what he is, instead of “boyfriend,” which is what he was before, seems to be making a big announcement. “Everyone! We’re going to get married!” But, this isn’t an announcement I want to make. We don’t have a date set and I’m not sure we ever will. I sort of pressured him into getting me a ring, I think, and now I don’t really like wearing it. I really don’t like the added hassle of having to clean it either, but it looks a lot nicer when I do.
The Big Berkey system was a big (read: expensive) purchase that felt necessary when my fiancé, Adam, and I moved into the rental where we live two years ago. The tap water had—and still has—a dusty flavor and scent that was amplified when we boiled water for tea or carbonated it using the Soda Stream. Also, fancier salt is often marketed as being crucial to proper nasal irrigation, but I’ve relied on the Morton’s girl and her umbrella in the rain for years with no problems.
I only learned about the brain-eating amoeba because, a couple of years ago, my mom sent me an alarming message that included a screenshot of someone’s facebook post of a news article. The news article was about a man whose death, scientists believed, was caused by the brain-eating amoeba found in the plumbing system in his home. Drinking tap water at this man’s home was safe—bacteria and amoeba can’t survive in the body when swallowed because stomach acid kills them—but our nasal passages are a direct pathway to the brain, and so the water became deadly when the man used a neti pot. My mom knew I used a neti pot for my allergies and had for years. Despite her warnings, however, I only recently stopped using straight tap water for my neti pot. A couple of weeks ago, Adam accidentally dropped my neti pot on the tile floor and it cracked to pieces. And, when searching for a new neti pot online, I came across another series of articles about the brain-eating amoeba and realized that I may be living a less risk-averse life than I thought.
In revising this journal entry/essay, I was able to locate a headline that includes the words “deadly” and “tap water” and “neti pot.” I learned that when the amoeba gets up the nose it “burrows into the skull and destroys brain tissue.” (This was from an Orlando Sentinel article published on August 26, 2011, which sounds like about the time frame for when my mom was sending me screen shots of articles she found on facebook all the time.) It turns out that many fatalities caused by this brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri amoeba, are linked to swimming in lakes and ponds, warm or hot freshwater lakes and ponds; in the U.S., this means mostly southern-tier states. According to the CDC, “of 133 people known to be infected in the U.S. since 1962, only three people survived.” I grew up swimming in lakes and ponds and I never worried about getting water up my nose for any reason other than the discomfort of having water up my nose. Now, I plan to never take my niece and nephew swimming in warm freshwater lakes again.
From the Sentinel article, I spent some time reading articles about all the recommended ways to make your tap water safe. I learned that the water is supposed to be boiled for three to five minutes. I don’t boil the water for three to five minutes because I use an electric tea kettle—I boil the water the night before and let it sit to cool overnight. The tea kettle only brings the water to a rolling boil and then automatically shuts off. So, even though I’ve been reminded about this business about burrowing and destruction and the very low chances for survival, I’m still pretty half-assed about my approach to taking precautions. I guess I’m weighing the harm I’d be doing to planet earth if I were to start buying plastic gallons of distilled water regularly against the slight chance that I’ll contract the Naegleria fowleri amoeba, and die within two weeks.
Note to self: I need to research further to understand whether or not my Big Berkey filter has a pore size of one micron or less, and if a one micron or less filter is sufficient for protecting myself from brain-eating amoeba. Maybe I don’t need to boil water at all?
The lilac hyacinths candle is something I purchased at Michael’s craft store a couple of weeks ago; three candles for nine bucks!
We’re currently looking for a house to purchase and I look forward to having the ability to install a bathroom fan.
We talk about having a Five Year Plan, but, in truth, I think the whole concept is bonkers.
I’ve spent most of the past six or seven years feeling pretty 100% certain that I wanted to have a baby. Now, I’m not so sure. And I’m not sure what to make of this ambivalence. Adam definitely wants a baby. He’d be a great dad. I think I’d be a great mom. But I’m not sure a great mom is the great thing I want to be in this life. I just started reading Motherhood by Sheila Heti, and I think reading it is pushing me to the “no baby” side of the scale. Thanks, Sheila.
This is language I picked up when I lived at a yoga center for six months. Most of my close friends speak this language.
I still use a paper planner.
However, the deal is that if he is not wearing his helmet and gets in an accident and suffers brain trauma, I’m allowed to leave. “Wear your helmet!” I’m always saying. “Most bike accidents happen within a half mile from home!” When we first moved to the city and he started biking regularly again, I ordered him a bike helmet. For his birthday, he got a neon yellow reflective vest and a fancy bike headlight.
It’s still hard for me to feel okay about being in a good mood when a therapy appointment rolls around. I know, intellectually, that there’s no “right way” to feel going into a therapy session, but part of me still feels that the appropriate state of mind (and heart) to be in when seeking help from a therapist is despair.
Brown is the fourth most common surname in the U.S., so it’s not such a wild coincidence as you might think. Or maybe it is, but it’s not as wild as it would be if our last names were something like Minder or Montesanti. And no, we’re not planning to hyphenate—"Elizabeth Brown-Brown”—but you wouldn’t be the first to suggest it.
Is asking this question the answer to this question?
Actually, I said that I wouldn’t have kids with him until he had a stable job because I want to stay home with my hypothetical baby for the first few months, at least.
I’ll admit, he almost always picks up the tab at restaurants.
There are several local coffee shops that I’d rather support, but what I like about Starbucks at the corner of North-and-South and Delmar is that I don’t have to talk to anyone. Not even the baristas, who are friendly enough, have time for small talk because the drive-through window always has a line and so their multi-tasking even as they take my order. And I don’t recognize any of the other customers, many of whom are students with earbuds stuck in their ears, sending out a message that they don’t want to be bothered, and so I don’t get caught making small talk with strangers.
I am one of those people who sometimes writes things I have already done on to do lists so that I can experience the satisfaction of crossing them off.
Claire Edwin Street was published alongside Stephen King in an early version of a Sci-Fi literary journal of sorts. My mother came across this in her childhood home once. I can’t locate any information online to back-up this claim or provide any details, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes!
Alisa is my mother.
Another thing possible with the daily diaries from the 80s—he transcribed 1980-1987 for us one year for Christmas, and I wasn’t very excited about this as a teenager—is to track my parents’ relationship. Here’s the gist of things. My mom’s mom died in June. She’d dropped out of college in the spring to be with her mother in the hospital (sort of), and so is living at home again with her dad. She got a job working for the city—pouring cement, mowing grass, clearing brush, that sort of thing. By May, the diary records that she stayed out all night. She went out with friends. Then my father’s name starts making appearances. He stayed over; he stayed over again; he was over for dinner, etc. By September, she was pregnant, and wedding plans began. In November, they were wed. In April, I was born. And all that time, my father was away, working on the barges, towing loads up and down the Mississippi River.

—Elizabeth K. Brown

Elizabeth K. Brown is a St. Louis-based writer. Her work has been published in Brevity Magazine, local foods magazines edible Iowa River Valley and edible Berkshires, and is forthcoming in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.

ELIZABETH BOQUET

I wake up when I wake up—it’s summer after all—measure out a cup of cereal and soak it with just enough milk. I practice my flute. Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t picked up my instrument for almost 30 years. It’s a risk to get too far into my day without playing it. I don’t sound great, but it’s not as bad as I thought.
Before the sun gets too high in the sky, I bike the neighborhood, in and out of the side streets, ending with one long loop around the perimeter. My biking shorts with the zipper slot are in the dirty clothes, so I pull on some crop pants. No pockets. I go out without a phone, without a key, without ID. It feels radical. I am never more than a mile from home.
By mid-morning it is hot as it should be, as it hasn’t been, enough to wear sunscreen, a linen top, a wide-brim hat. It is World Music Day, and our nutmeg of a state is on board. All over Connecticut, people have been urged to come out and play. I am not. Not in public.
Musicians are posted all around our downtown in Milford. I park at my dad’s senior housing complex and call him from my car to see if he’d like to check things out with me. He’s an old musician—a sax man—and when he picks up the phone, I can tell he is already somewhere in a crowd. 88 and still groovin’. “We’re at the café,” he says. “Come on and meet us.”
I head in that direction, a few blocks away, but don’t make it more than half of one before I stop for a good long time at City Hall, where a local jazz musician is playing an upright piano at the top of the steps. He is world-class. I move to where most people are sitting, under the shade of a few birch trees in a small pocket park, but it is too far. I walk closer and experiment—to the right, to the left, one step up, two steps up. I find my spot. Between songs he asks, “Do you play?” And I say, “A little bit.”
Later I find my dad and his ladyfriend still at the café, listening to a female folk singer doing her thing. I tell them what a performance they missed at City Hall and encourage them to stop by there on their way back to the apartment. They do, and they catch the local high school choir. “How was it?” I ask. “Oh, it was exciting,” he says, but only because one poor girl puked in the heat. The paramedics carted her off.
That night, my husband and I throw some burgers on the grill and find reasons to sit out on the back deck for hours. The animals in the estuary behind our house get impatient waiting for the sun to set. A red-winged blackbird harasses a hawk, a baby raccoon practices climbing the oak tree at the edge of our property, a possum peeks out from behind the azaleas, our dog sprints across the patio and chases it into the marsh. Finally, the mosquitos drive us in.

—Elizabeth Boquet

Elizabeth Boquet is Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT.

AMBER CARPENTER

It starts with a circumstantial beginning: localized, lower back pain. My body is limited in its ability to stand upright, to move at a fast pace, and since the incident, I have become acutely aware of connectivity.
We recently moved. Several windows illuminate our new home, and this morning, a blinding sunrise compelled my eyes to squint and my injured body to shift. Instead of instantly bending at the hip, I have to map each movement with caution. If I steady my elbow here, swing both legs around and place my hands here, I can transition from this position to this position. It sounds like an algebraic word problem, which must be solved each time I sit, stand, and lie down.
My wife brings me coffee in bed, tells me to take this and drops four Ibuprofen in the palm of my hand. I take slow sips, scroll through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and check on donations for immigrant children. Koko the gorilla died today. She was forty-six. They say that her impact was profound, which is far more than anyone could say about our current administration.
Our laundry hamper currently serves as a stand-in for my nightstand. Bathroom belongings lay scattered across the double vanity. Cardboard boxes line the linoleum floor, upstairs and down. But my electric toothbrush is plugged in, the same set of mint green sheets covers our mattress, and I drink ice water from my purple water bottle, the one with a dented bottom. I take comfort in the ordinary, but I tend to resist routines and practicality.
In the shower, I notice terra cotta rooftops and California fan palms. Two rock pigeons land on the roof closest to ours, and just as I start to admire their color patterns—flecks of greens, purples, and blues—one pigeon rushes toward the other until it flies away. It, as if a bird is an object without body or song. They might be more appropriate. I would hate to misgender.
I take Stella, a twelve-year-old Boxer, on a mid-afternoon walk. Her owner warned me about a heart condition and mentioned that Stella’s heart could fail at any minute. What an unpredictable organ. Sometimes I forget that I have an expiration date, that my heart will someday stop. When we sit together on the bare floor of her one-bedroom apartment, she stares into my eyes, and I wonder what she thinks of me, of this stranger who enters her home twice a week. Spit bubbles form at her jowls. Movement is gradual, something we now have in common. I look closely at bookshelves in the living room: Cunt: A Declaration of Independence; Memoirs of a Geisha; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; Like Water for Chocolate. Such intimate findings, more intimate than conversations.
Back home, we argue. Three years of residency brought us here: here as in San Jose, 2000 miles from Chicago; here as in this moment, this argument, this predicament. 1095 days of separation—an invisible, unsought line drawn between spouse and spouse, shifts and classes, sleep and consciousness. She concedes that she needs more love from me, but more implies not enough, and I find it hard to admit that my love is not enough, not right now, in this moment. The thing is, I need more love from me, too.

—Amber Carpenter

Amber Carpenter is a recent MFA graduate from Columbia College Chicago's Nonfiction program. She completed her MA in English from East Carolina University in 2012 with a concentration in both poetry and nonfiction. Her work, which includes writing and photography, has been published in Sinister Wisdom, Two Hawks Quarterly, Mount Hope Magazine, and Glassworks Magazine.

KAT MOORE

I sleep in. I stay somewhere between wake and dreaming in between the snoozing alarm. I blame my sleepiness on the end of two years of middle school teaching. I still dream I’m in my classroom overcrowded with students and I don’t understand why we are still there. In my dreams, I know it’s June. I know school should be over. I awake relieved and then drift back to sleep and into better dreams. I finally raise myself out of bed around 10:30.
Once up, I pour a cup of cold coffee, made earlier by my husband, and then heat it in the microwave. I need to start sorting through my books and clothes. We are moving from Memphis, from our three-bedroom home with a finished attic that is a two-room loft, and into a small two-bedroom apartment in another state. I need to downsize, to find a way to let go of some of my books and dresses. In the fall, I will be working on a PhD at a university in Texas. I am forty. Old, in my mind. A late bloomer. A heroin addiction took up the better part of my twenties, and then living in twelve step meetings filled up my late twenties and early thirties. I am behind in life, but have decided to live the life I want.
Around noon, I put a Bikini Kill record on the player. I want music that will energize me into opening my dresser drawers and separating clothes into a keep pile and a donate pile. Instead, it makes me sit down and write an essay that I have been wanting to write for years. That I have tried to write on numerous occasions, but somehow can’t find the narrative. I know I want to end on me at seventeen inside the gritty punk Antenna Club in midtown Memphis, my hands picking up the microphone while Bikini Kill performs on the small stage, the lead singer doing cartwheels, and then my voice screaming out made up lyrics. But I don’t know what comes before. I don’t know how to shape the story that would show how much this band, these three women and one guy, mean to me. With their music blaring, I open a document and write. I sing along with the songs. The lead singer Kathleen Hanna screams out “Silence inside of me silence inside,” and I am seventeen again and lost inside my own angst and pain.
After four hours, and two records playing over and over, I finally have a rough draft. The voice isn’t my usual fare, instead it’s rough and angry, like their music, like I was at that age. A narrative emerges. A story of teen rage, of teen brokenness, a drunk father, a punk rock girl best friend, a history teacher who harassed and intimidated, and a guidance counselor who punished and didn’t advocate. I let the words settle. I change the music to The Julie Ruin, a recent band with Kathleen Hanna and the bass player of Bikini Kill all grown up, and dance barefoot in my office.
Around six p.m., a young man arrives at my door. My husband is home from work. The young man is in Teach for America and has signed up for two years of teaching in Memphis. He looks to be in his early twenties. He wears a blue button down and khaki pants. He has been in Teach for America (TFA) training all day. He lives in a dorm at the local university that works in conjunction with TFA. He’s hoping to rent out our house. He stands in our living room, full of idealism with sweat marks saturating his shirt beneath his arms. Architecture is his current obsession and he likes our crystal bulb doorknobs and built in bookshelves.
We bought the house a year earlier when I still thought that secondary school teaching was a doable thing for me. When I still had delusions of being Mr. Keating (Dead Poet’s) ten months of the year while still finding time to write. But that had deteriorated when my identity as anything other than a teacher began to fade due to lesson plans, data planning, behavior planning, differentiated instruction, and a whole lot of other words that are common place in public education. I regret buying the house. I feel like it tethers me to Memphis and to that career. But then my husband said that we could always rent it out. Then I applied to a PhD program and got in. Now, the fresh-faced man, just embarking on his teaching journey, is in my home, and he loves it, and wants to rent it. He seems smart and kind. Responsible. Better suited for that career than I. His girlfriend will be moving down too. I’m glad to rent it to them. To free myself from this place.
For dinner, I eat rice cakes smeared with peanut butter. I watch a YouTube video of Kathleen Hanna performing a sort of spoken word storytelling thing with a back-up band. She tells about coining the phrase “Kurt smells like teen spirit,” and how her friend turned it into a hit song. A hit song that made him a lot of money while she had to strip to make enough money to fix her band’s broken van. She pauses during parts of the story and sings bits of his song. She isn’t spiteful. It’s humorous, part confessional/part homage. Yes, she had to strip, but the guy, her friend, is dead. I remember when he died. It was April 1994—the end of my junior year in high school. I was over the hit song, and more into his wife, who walked around a Seattle park in her pajamas and pigtails, no make-up, and read aloud his suicide note. I liked her because she was hated, and soon would be more hated, and even accused of murder. But she was all fucked up, like I was soon to be at that time. The wife even attacked Kathleen a few years later. Punched her in the face at a Lollapalooza. When the video ends, I turn on The Punk Singer, a documentary about Kathleen Hanna. It mentions the phrase that became a hit song, it mentions the face punching. I still love them all, Kathleen and Courtney, and Kurt too.
I end the evening with a hot bath with lavender Epsom salt. I soak in the water and start reading a collection of essays that I bought on my honeymoon days earlier in San Francisco. The voice is deeply internal. A voice trapped inside layers of thought, a strong interior identity that probably isn’t shared with casual friends, but reveals itself intimately in the essays. After a few pages, I realize I have no idea what I just read because my thoughts have returned to my essay, the rough draft from earlier in the day. I realize that not everyone knows who Bikini Kill is, and that I probably need to add sections about the band. Like how they kick started the riot grrrl movement, like how they were a young feminist punk band that challenged the machismo of the 1990’s punk scene, like how they were criticized by the mainstream media, how young teen girls loved them because the music was just what the girls needed in their own lives.
After the bath, I crawl into bed relieved that the house is rented, and with a plan to sort my clothes and books tomorrow. But I know that I will spend most of the day listening to records and revising my essay, the first one I have written since the summer before. For a moment, I wonder if I should have remained a middle school teacher, but the joy of writing and remembering is still fresh in my skin as I drift off to sleep.

—Kat Moore

Kat Moore is an essayist and poet. Her work appears in Yemassee, Profane, Salt Hill, New South, Pithead Chapel, Hippocampus, Blunderbuss, and others.

DONALD CARR

Golden rays of light pour through my windowpane. My eyelids flicker. Consciousness taps every so gently on my membrane. I awake today into the estate of gods— the present—this paradise of earthly delight. I have been waiting all my life for this moment to arrive. Yes, heaven is here on earth, and only those who don’t know it seek to leave. Dying is optional. N’est pas? Well, it is possible I exaggerate, slightly. I hear angels walking. Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Come fly with me down the corridors of life. I’m a tour de force now forced to tour.
10 a.m. The electric sundial-clock registers the tenth hour of daylight. I break my nights fast with six sweet oranges, and homemade strawberry-cherry juice simmered overnight with ginger, which goes down well. My stomach growls its appreciation. I leave home to meet with Cheryl. The neighbour’s pink tea-rose bush is in full bloom. Delicate fragrances surf the morning breeze. I need no invitation. I gently hold a few roses, my nostrils inhaling their essence. I am pollinated. My life opens up just like a flower.
At the subway booth, the operator calls out “Hey man, what’s happening?”
I drop a ticket in the box give him a smile. “Happy I’m here.”
The TTC eastbound subway train pulls into station. On board are many good-looking people but today not many of them are looking good. Students peruse open books. Businessmen with plugs in their ears stare vacantly into space, some with blackberries in their hands were engrossed to the point of oblivion. Though they did look up from time to time in consternation as if they heard mermaids singing. Then they returned to their hand held sirens. Once upon a time we went out to meet others, now we go out to be alone. Am I bored? Hell no! I spent my green age on an Island in the sun, blessed by nature. I crossed oceans to get here. I am here for the experience. I know why the caged bird sings-to keeps from crying. I don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles.
For mental stimulation I find the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. I read my horoscope first, just in case. AQUARIUS: “You sense a lot is going on behind the scene, yet you can’t seem to verify your hunch. Let go of your intuitive feelings for now. Use your energy well. Know when to separate work and play. Tonight be the belle or beau of the ball. It’s a wonderful life.”
I look around me. Posters promote “If you see something say something.” Headlines on the front pages; “Twenty first century schizoid-man is suffering from M.A.D. Now that’s an oxymoron— Mutually Assured Destruction. Yes, even cows are mad. Prophesied terror is now visited upon us. Black widow returns as suicide bomber. Toy solders grin widely as they posed for photograph. What all the wise men promised has not happened and what all the damned fools said would happen have come to pass. One woe is past. One woe— Resident evil Trump—is now visiting Casablanca. And behold, comes two more woes hereafter. To put it lightly: SOS; it is urgent! Save our souls. At any minute the lights could go down. And I don’t mean for the feature presentation Gone With the Wind. What do you think? It’s impossible to reply? I return to crossword. Number 21 down, 4-letter word for despot…Tsar.
Yes, dark days up ahead! Hell is coming for breakfast, whether we like it or not.
11:45 a.m. “Hello.” “It’s me. I’m downstairs.” I arrive at chez Cheryl. She gently informs me I am late. She hugs me in greetings the little companion dog licks my face. She asks that I notify her whenever my estimate time of arrival changes. Humbled, I promise to honour her request. We work on 20 pages of URBAN SHAMAN RAVES ON X-T-C.
Dark star Marcus ‘Messiah’ Garvey-Miss Rosa Parks Rap:

Friends, we are traveling together.
The world is a mandala.
Throw off tiredness.
Let us show you the beauty that can be spoken.
Truths dressed in tales of wonder
Some as young as the tooth, some as old as yesterday
Oh! What tales we ancient mariners have to tell
Some from the buried past of the earth
the shades of night have long cloaked over,
Like that first time on primordial earth
The Himalayas were coral reefs under the sea
The Sahara an ocean populated by mighty blue whales
when our ancestral species emerged from the dim mist of time.
All this is not hearsay or heresy,
not legends or myths but living facts.
History shouldn’t be a mystery.

2 p.m. I’m on my way home, walking through a green park. Trees, unable to move, wave branches at me, rocking in treetops birds chirp to console baby chicks. In the spaces recently vacated by fallen leaves the horizon moves in closer for a kiss. Butterflies dressed in the blossoms of wildflowers flirt shamelessly with me as they flit by. I reflect on the past two hours of mental and emotional stimulation in Cheryl’s wordsmith lab using the twenty-six magic symbols, the alphabet. “Such a joy to work with a gentle spirit.” The grass whispers, “Speak your mind and others will be delighted by what they hear.” The sunflowers in the garden beds turn their yellow faces towards me and—for a moment forgetting the sun—nod their heads to me in soft ovation as I pass by in holy indifference. I am blinded by delight.

The subway compartment is very cool, even cold. Outside the Lansdowne station the air is turgid. Wheelchair warriors negotiate with pedestrians along the sidewalk. A daredevil in a spider man suit performs a stunt at the crosswalk. He may have been big in Japan (as his musical accompaniment proclaimed) but backed-up drivers beep-beep their horns in annoyance. I count 10 cars, private chariots made of steel; 8 have only one person in them, and 7 out of the 10 drivers had a large stomach and one was pregnant.
I check out the passer-by. I see Ray bans, knock-off Calvin’s, even an eye patch (I did not catch the brand) Not many bare faces. On an average, 9 people out of 12 wear dark glasses. Yes, the sun is bright. Some eyeglasses are prescriptions, and yes, I see my reflection a lot. I remind myself not to look at people wearing dark shades since, by their shades, they have communicated to me that they are travelling incognito. Henceforth I will abide by their unspoken wish.

The Paradise Club is at the top of my street on the west side. In Canada women everywhere are free but at the Paradise Club they wear thongs. Eyes veiled but still available. A vast Value Village storehouse occupies the east side. I satisfy the thrill that comes from spending—wisely. My stars are aligned as far as pleasure and value are concerned: I get a Daniel Hechter floral shirt; a Versace shirt—nuff said; and the most beautiful purple paisley patterned shirt from Express. The total sets me way back—$30. “Say what? Today I get 30% off.”
“Have a good day.”
“Yes, I intend to.”
The houses I pass are modest, many still owned by the original owners, some now reluctantly moving into old age homes. Text messages from busy grandchildren are not enough in the dead of night when one needs is a live touch. LOL does not evict a smile. I see a “For sale” sign. A Wheel-Trans vehicle pulls up two doors down.
I say hello to various people sitting on verandas. I recognize different languages—Ukrainian, Japanese, Italian, Irish, Somalia, and more. They all acknowledge my greetings, in their own way. I stroll past the tea-rose bushes in full flower. Unfurled petals call out to me, again. I hear them with my nose. Some of the deep pussy-pink tones of the rose petals have—in the light of the sun—now lightened in colour, their yellow centers still inviting. I wait my turn while two bees do their thing. They load themselves with yellow stuff, they buzz off to their hidden hive. Roses are so hip. I visit the yellow center, extend my tongue, and sip some nectar. I inhale the scent of beauty conquering decay.
2:46 p.m. Home, I turn on the light. The man-in-the mirror comprehends why others observed him in mild amusement in the subway cars and on the streets as he passed them: my nose is yellow from the pollen dustings, yellow polka dots the landscape of my face from when I supped the nectar. Yes, in me the tiger sniffs the rose. Though wildflowers please me more.
I turn on my favourite music station. The music is infectious. The singer entreats me: “Have you ever dreamed, have you ever loved someone…tell me how you feel, when you feel real.” I check myself: Am I feeling groovy? Am I in a place where I feel I can be real? The DJ hears my call. “Jamaica Funk” hits the airwaves. Hell yes! Turn up the volume. Light up a chalice in the palace. Jamaica Funk, let me get into you! If I set my mind free my ass will surely follow. I am not hard. I am frightfully soft-by half. In fact I’m micro-soft. Am I tripping? This is more than just a twist in my sobriety.
3:33 p.m. where does the time go? Shower. Clean underwear, check. Dressed in my new floral shirt, yellow pants, and footwear. Check out the man in the mirror. My mirrored image smiles back at me. Yes, I’m flex. Outside and into the heated air once more. The last ten summer temperatures have been hotter, each year, than the year before. I smell my tea roses, some petals wilting. “Good afternoon” I nod to old men in shirtsleeves playing chess on front porches and to gardeners on their knees uprooting unruly weeds. Young ones on their way home from school play games under the gaze of anxious mothers.
In the subway before the evening rush, many are engaged with little black boxes they caress in their palms. With no distraction in my hands or ears or pockets (No! I don’t have Lucifer on speed dial I am left up to my own devices—my mind, which like a parachute only functions when open.) With time on my hands I see hunched-over shoulders, either to protect privacy or a function of deteriorating eyesight, no doubt from staring into a lit screen for hours on end. Even sunlight burns if you get too much of it. I observe how bad—on a whole—posture has become, how monotone the clothes are: beige, black, and white. Women dress with more sense of flair. Men dress to hide their lack of style. Most are dressed by the Gap; blue jeans predominate. Look at that—ripped jeans! How au courant! Torn knees. How very 80s! I wonder if Cher and Diana Ross still have theirs.
The train stops. A woman hiding in an angry-red dress with a hood and wearing ‘fuck me’ pumps cha-cha into the car like a cat on a hot tin roof. Mon dieu! She is startling—one of the Gorgon sister—to say the least. Yes, many insist that beauty, like contact lens, is in the eyes of the beholder but this writer assures you: ugliness is to the bone. I have to presume she has no friends, because a friend would not have allowed her to leave the house looking the way she did. I would not have been surprised to learn that she was also banned from mirror shops. She must be on her way to meet a blind date. Some big bad wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing and wearing shades a-waits up ahead. No doubt ready to huff and puff and blow her house in.
An unseen voice crackles over the TTC’s communication speakers: ‘due to unforeseen circumstances this train will be standing still until future notice.’ Heat swept through the car like a tidal wave. Seems Wi-Fi, whatsapp news, weather, sport, all down. High anxiety ran amok. Little Miss Red Riding Hood smiles in my direction. Her hot-lava dress rocked and rolled my soul with more dolomite than Lot’s wife. Now I comprehend the line from Sartre’s play, No Exit: Hell is other people. Okay Medusa! Though it kills me to say it. You’ve proven it. I am human. For, I am stoned again. The train pulled into the station. My body got out and stood still until sight returns. Unlike Lot’s wife I did not looked back
At the Shiatsu Clinic, an old building with a character, the waiting room is friendly. Everyone smiles easily, even if they are in various degrees of pain. A team of three students of different nationalities who graduate in six weeks and a supervisor attend to me. They take my pulse: 82; observe my tongue color: purple, dusky; ask the reason for this visit: lower lumbar. A team member—during a conversation on the importance of the skin and touching and positive body acceptance— tells me about a book she recommends: 5 LOVE LANGUAGES. Her conversation opens a door to observe my feelings through a different set of prisms. The team discusses my diagnosis, and suggests treatment: cupping, massage, and needles. I surrender my body on a narrow bed. What? Sixty minutes passed already? Okay. Thanks a $1000000. No Don, only $20. Refreshed, I am walking on air.
5 p.m. From the cool interior of the clinic I go out to the roller coaster of Spadina Avenue. At intersections, bicyclists line up waiting for the stoplight to change. Daredevil skateboarders zip by in apparent disdain for the laws of gravity. I go for a trip to Kensington Market. Beggars down on their luck seek handouts as they hold up walls with their backs. I give a Blanche DuBois in a clean white dress-the symbol of purity and innocence- the changes in my pocket. Talk about having ‘to depend on the kindness of strangers.’ It cannot be denied: begging is one of the hardest jobs around this town.
The market’s outdoor stalls bustle with shoppers. Trucks drop-off pick-up produce. At a small café I eat an amazing colourful of salad with a curry-ginger dressing that delivered on its promise. I felt I had eaten the rainbow. At the Caribbean Corner, I pick up a dozen mangoes from Jamaica, an avocado from Dominica, plantains, and fresh frozen coconut water. Frozen coconut water, just what the doctor ordered. At the health food store I purchase cranberries, cilantro, black beans, cashews, and hibiscus flowers.
Bob Marley reggae-rocks the airwaves. “Sun is shining, the weather is sweet.” Long-legged girls in short-shorts eat mangoes in the shades. A Sampson in dreadlocks tries to persuade a wandering Delilah to offer up her honour so that he can honour her offer; all night he would be on and off her. Down the next street I pass a music vinyl shop. A singer keeps asking from the speaker:
“You love me now, don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?”
I think: this is not a love song she must be very pretty to have such a problem. Still, the beat is infectious. My spirit dances, it sings the refrain: “You love me now, don’t you?” to everyone I pass. The ugly people frown cross-eyed, the alive people’ eyes light up. Sweetly we smile in happiness. Cool guy banters, “I like your true colors.” Of this I am sure, just as I am sure that E= MC Squared: free people look alike no matter what the colour their skin.
I return to the Shiatsu Clinic. I gift a mango to each of the three angels of mercy who laid their healing hands on me, as well as one to the receptionist and to the supervisor. I have now completed one of my daily goals. I returned from a trip to South Africa with a better understanding of the word “poverty,” and made a promise to myself: Every day I will give someone a gift to prove that in this brief time called life, I live in an area of the earthly paradise named Canada.
As the evening spreads out against the sky I amble northwards through leafy streets with two-story houses. Front gardens bloom in the richness of summer. Green lawns grow signs: “Leave fossil fuel in the ground.” “Slow down children at play” Restaurants advertise with signs: “Our flights are never overbooked, and we won’t lose your luggage,” and “Tonight’s forecast: 99% chance of wine.” Evening diners call to others. Forks click-clack on china plates. Chilled wine does its magic. Chatter inebriated by distilled spirits takes flight. Ah yes, the pleasure of leisure. La dolce vita. Indeed!
6:30 p.m. The Sivananda Yoga Center on Harbord St is housed in a two-story building that used to be The Fifth Kingdom bookstore. Books: Journey to Shambala, Silent Springs, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, The Book of Grass, Secrets of the Third Eye, The way of Tao. Now Yoga shows the way. Health is wealth. Peace of mind is happiness. I keep eyes closed for the full 90 minutes of yoga class. Time belongs to me to spend in physical meditation. The sound of traffic fades. In the backyards birds raise their voices in a choir. I am in the right place to be real. Om shanti shanti shanti. Peace. Peace. Peace. Class ends. I go downstairs, and I am in luck; I am invited to a celebration for a teacher’s birthday. A feast is laid out, lentils, rice, varieties of vegetables dressed with turmeric, ginger, cardamom and others to which my taste buds were introduced for the first time. I am gifted a small bag to take home. Gratitude flows. I feel blessed.
9:30 p.m. On the subway journey homeward, it is clear that little black tablets have replaced newspapers. This morning on the train a lot of people looked sad, as if they were going somewhere they didn’t want to go, but now at the day’s end, but on the return journey a lot more people look sadder, as if where they were going they didn’t want to go. How peculiar.
Outside Dufferin St. Stationand Bloor St. is abuzz. Shorts, seersucker shirts and sandals. I pass among people to whom the street corners serve as a kind of living room. Some are caught up in the yellows and blues of their days they spit out the butt ends of their days and their ways on the sidewalk. A lady of the night gives me the ‘come hither’ look.
“Hey baby, you want to have some fun?”
I am amused. I bargain. “It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on how much you are going to pay me.”
She laughs and passes on, seeking a better bargain, no doubt.
At Mercer Union Center For Contemporary Art there is a crowd of fashionable people. The crowd exhibits style from their toes to the crowns of their heads. Is this where the post-modernist are hanging out?”
“Hey D, so good to see you,” someone calls.
Cosmos, a calypsonian and bandleader of one of the Caribbean floats greet me. ”What you been up to? I haven’t seen you in a donkey’s year. Chill out! Come have a drink with us.”
An opening night party for a new art installation is in full swing. Different rooms host a soundscape installation. I spend time in each twilight zone absorbing the sounds and visuals, wall murals, and photographs. It is loud, hypnotic, verging on cacophony. I ponder, “Brave new world? Is this the current undercurrent?
An acquaintance, with beautiful lips, greets me. “Hello D, you look resplendent tonight”
“Wow, such vocabulary. Intelligence is so sexy” I respond.
She was charmed. “Who are you wearing?”
She was in full Black Panther mode. I couldn’t resist a jest “I’m wearing white privilege”
We collapsed in laughter’s euphoric feelings of well-being. My friend introduces her two beloved daughters. In the neon light they shine like black pearls. Intelligence and graciousness becomes them. One tall slender child weighed one-and-a-half pounds at her birth. I hug her longer sheer amazement at the miracle of her being in my arms. I whisper in her ear, “Never be afraid. FEAR means you have Faced Everything And Recovered. I admire you for your strength.” An hour is spent skylarking at the ball. Thanks for all the memories.
Swimming through the waves of heat my body floats homeward. In the moonlit garden the tea-rose petals fold inward. Standing on a carpet of pink petals. I pull rose branches closer, avoiding the prick of their thorns, which is their way to caress. Dewdrops wash my face as I inhale deeply. A wise echo whispers in my ears. ” I am Nature. I adore you.” I can still hear sweet echo’s refrain “ I adore you”
11 p.m. Home. Note to self: my new apparel served me well. Yes full value, give thanks. I hang them up. Turn fan on full blast. Breeze hits my naked skin. I am home. No need to dress. Put on music. Will wonders never cease! What’s this I hear!
Cascading on the thin-skin eardrum a mystifying transcendental melody vibrates. A holy shit moment! Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance.’ Yes, it’s a marvellous night for a moondance. I do not need a second encouragement from the magician to sail into the mystic. My new motto: Reach for the sky and if I only touch the clouds, well, at least my feet will have left the ground. I turn up the volume. Time to go stargazing. Light up another chalice in de palace. Bring out frozen coconut water. DJ sure knows how to move a crowd: retro techno disco dub rock pop hip-hop bebop don’t stop! This miracle called a body is high after massage, acupuncture, yoga, art and meditation. I dance my ass off. I flee the scene for a love supreme.
11:55 p.m. My concubine—named Art—calls me. I put Alice Coltrane Ptah the El Daoud on the turntable. Lush string arrangements and cascading harps wash over me. The day’s excavations—my collaboration with Cheryl—I bring up on my MacBook. My energy body thrills in anticipation.
This ark of clay with its sail screen of skin, nerves, and bones rides on the flood of time. Inside this chemical crucible, time performs its carbon miracle with the accidental and fortuitous concurrence of atoms, gene cascades, enzymes, and colliding molecules. Inside this chariot of flesh, there are canyons, Pine Mountains, lakes, and hundreds of millions of hundreds of millions of stars. (But, who is counting?) Each star has its orbit: centric, eccentric, and ex-centric, each one a concentric soul of light scattering in the darkness, never burning out—like love—only growing fainter or stronger Here on Earth, this place where God dawns on chaos, bones need bare flesh, for in the heavens and in the hells love is a crime that needs an accomplice, and gods are obsolete unless they kiss.
Yes, energy is delight shared, and eternity is an hour that the wind blows back again. And as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? It depends on whether they have rhythm.
If I have to disturb the universe, so be it.

—Donald Carr

Donald Carr. Born on an island in the sun, blessed by nature with a Jamaican birth. Mr Carr combines poetry and hip-hop-rap-opera to explore themes of racism, toxic masculinity and power. He has written and directed a steady stream of creative works that have progressively explored the boundaries of dance and theatre. By tapping into the energy and visions of diverse cultures he simultaneously entertains while educating the mind and feeding the imagination. He is committed to collaborating and producing original works reflecting the voices of Canada’s diverse communities.
URBAN SHAMAN RAVES ON X-T-C concentrates on the cutting edge of cultural and political themes. Three distinct voices—an Intelligent Black Man (IBM), historical legend Rosa Parks, and a Black angel— discuss the agony and ecstasy of being Black in a largely white society. Looking beyond the exotic and into the universal human heart to explore universal wounds.
The wounds that can be named can be healed.

SONJA LIVINGSTON

I wake up in a part of the world where three states touch toes. I’m on a writing retreat in the Cumberland Gap, which means I drive to Kentucky for coffee, cross back to Tennessee for a lemon-filled glazed from Sweet as Honey Donuts, head into Virginia and the Wilderness Road where Daniel Boone forged a trail through the Appalachians more than two centuries ago. Exploration we called it back then. Progress. Destiny. Funny how the words we use to describe wandering onto new lands change depending on who does the wandering and where and when.

I start up my car and just like that I’m in Kentucky. Just like that I’m in Virginia. Just like that I’m back in Tennessee.
Tennessee, the welcome sign says, the Volunteer State.
Virginia is for Lovers.
Kentucky: Unbridled Spirit.
Apart from slogans, nothing seems different but license plates, laws governing cell phone use in moving vehicles, and the ability to buy liquor locally. If not for signs informing you of your whereabouts, you would not know the exact state you’re in. The mimosas bloom their otherworldly silken blossoms without deference to zip code. Catalpa leaves cascade like oversized green hearts from massive branches. Steeples rise from Baptist churches alongside Dollar Generals and barbecue places named for the folksy characteristics of those who ostensibly manage the pits. Heavy’s. Bubby’s. Grateful Ed’s. All of these things, the sweet smoky same, regardless of state line.

I grab a coffee to go, drive a mile east, and stand in the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park reading an informational sign.
You are here, the sign says, the dark block of text hovering over Virginia.
An image of Meriwether Lewis with his surveying equipment is featured beside a map of the Cumberland Gap, and an excerpt of a letter sent a few months after Lewis and his friend Clark pushed west exploring and cataloging the land beyond the Mississippi River.
This day, Lewis writes in November 1806, I undertook to settle the latitude of…Walker’s Line, formerly dividing the States of Virginia and North Carolina.
Lewis goes on, talking distances, divisions, and state lines. For 27 years, the sign explains, no one agreed on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee.
I look again at the map. You are here. What a tempting a triad of words. What solidity they seem to offer; the key to sorting yourself out within the larger landscape. Even the sketch of Lewis has a sepia-tinged post-colonial pioneer charm. Still, I can only look into the sign for so long before I’m distracted by the land itself.
Coffee in hand, I consider the mountains, the trees, and the kudzu creeping whichever way it pleases. I stretch out from Virginia, push a hand into Kentucky, breathe the cool clean air from Tennessee while considering the chicory raging in powder blue stands. They die nearly as soon as you pick them, those roadside flowers—try to grab hold of certain shades of blue, and just like that, they’re gone.
And on this day when the light begins its slow crawl back toward darkness, the impermanence of those soft blue petals and the changeability of state lines makes me lean against my car and wonder about the edges of things. I think of the morning news. Men and women pounding at our southern border. Children detained behind barbed wire. Families captured, turned away, sent back. The lengths we’ll go to keep people from crossing lines made by men who roamed the land centuries before—men with ambition and mapmaking skills; men who looked at the curve of the river, the rise of mountain and said to themselves, here. You are here.
That the land belonged to others was a minor inconvenience. That the land is not made for human holding did not enter into their acquisitive mechanical heads. That states and countries and all manner of borders are arbitrary, imagined, and all too often cruel, we can still hardly face. Instead, we give in to the overwhelming desire to box ourselves in, insisting on walls and lines and various points of demarcation. This is understandable. We are so small in the face of the world, what can we do but grab sticks and scratch lines into the dirt around ourselves like children playing with crayons?
This is Kentucky, we say. This is Tennessee.
This is my side of the river. That is yours.
You are here, we say, and let ourselves believe it stands for more than it ever can.

—Sonja Livingston

Sonja is the author of three books of literary nonfiction, including the award-winning memoir Ghostbread. She teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

CINDY BRADLEY

Woke up later than the sun did. Later than the birds did, but not late enough to consider it sleeping in. Walked into the family room, opened the blinds to let the sun that had been up for over an hour into the room—not too bright with a few passing clouds—and opened the sliding glass door to let my cat out of the room, waited for her daily dart through my legs, into the back yard.
Turned on my computer. Listened for the faint humming of waking up, a somewhat reassuring sign of things working in a time when there’s little reassurance of things working. Loaded and checked the usual pages – Yahoo email, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Submittable, in that order—because there’s solace on this solstice in rituals, no matter how small.
Drank two cups of coffee. Turned on YouTube, clicked and scrolled to find my workout for the day, deciding on cardio walking, followed by Pilates. Got through the cardio fine, the Pilates gave me trouble. I’d hoped the nausea and lightheadedness I’d been feeling for a couple of weeks—ebbing and flowing like the tide, not a constant thing—had ebbed its way out of my system, but no. It flowed with me as I rose from a supine position to reach for my toes, still there as I rolled back down. My daughter jokes that I’m pregnant, which at my age would be something resembling an immaculate ha-ha.
Slice a piece of bread. Sourdough Yellow Corn Bread, to be exact. Homemade, but not by me. Bread is my son-in-law’s baking department, and his monthly varieties can’t be missed. I slip the slice in the toaster, slater avocado all over when it’s done. I grab a bottle of water, the first of five or six throughout the, thinking maybe I’m dehydrated and make a mental note to drink more.
Opened the front door, letting in my friend and neighbor. She’s here for our weekly The Handmaid’s Tale viewing. In a series built on the novel of a disturbing dystopia, containing episodes leaving me haunted, this one left me completely undone.
Think maybe my symptoms are related to stress. Not sure what the source of the stress could be, but I remember feeling this way once before. It was the month before my then-husband and I decided on divorce, and the tension was more than I could bear. I thought I might be developing an ulcer, or some other stomach malady, but the symptoms disappeared when he said yes, we’re over.
Left the house. The sun felt warm, the day hovering just under 100. Met my daughter and three granddaughters at the library, marveling as always at their antics. They read books, jumped on chairs at the computer station, prepared food in the kitchen, rocked baby dolls, played puzzles. A reminder of how children jampack the minutes, hours, days with so much wonder.

—Cindy Bradley

Cindy Bradley obtained her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State University. She currently serves as a nonfiction assistant editor for Pithead Chapel. Her work has appeared in 45th Parallel, Front Porch Journal, Under the Sun, among others. Her essay "Death, Driveways, and Dreams", featured in Under the Sun's 2016 issue, was selected as notable by Best American Essays. She is currently working on a memoir and looking forward to attending The Normal School's Creative Nonfiction Workshop and Publishing Institute this summer.

Check back for more dispatches from June 21, 2018 tomorrow. —Editors

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

July 10: Kelly Caldwell • Dave Mondy • Lawrence Lenhart • Elizabeth Boquet • Amber Carpenter • Kat Moore • Donald Carr • Sonja Livingston • Cindy Bradley • Elizabeth K. Brown

July 10: Kelly Caldwell • Dave Mondy • Lawrence Lenhart • Elizabeth Boquet • Amber Carpenter • Kat Moore • Donald Carr • Sonja Livingston • Cindy Bradley • Elizabeth K. Brown

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