Profit and Loss
During chemotherapy, a man nearby loudly buys Microsoft shares. His call with his broker blares on speaker, echoing through the ward. What a jerk! After my infusion, he’s beside me in the elevator, trading Amazon. I ignore him. Then, I notice his white wristband — just like mine. He’s getting chemo, too. Before reaching the lobby, we rip off our bracelets. I see deep grief in his eyes. Driving home, I let a car merge ahead. In Boston, that’s rare. Yet in that small gesture, I carry the man with me, my fellow traveler in the elevator’s brief descent into grace. — Rosie Sultan
The ‘Best Cooker’
At 4, my nephew, Jahan, already a seasoned foodie, smiled after eating a beautiful jerk-chicken meal prepared by his grandmother (my mother) and said, “Grandma, you are the best cooker.” Thirty years later, my mother, Hazeline, age 94 and living with Alzheimer’s disease, leaned against the kitchen counter while eating a slice of my freshly baked pound cake. With a glint in her eyes and in a soft, sweet voice, she said to me, her primary caregiver, “You are the best cooker.” Perhaps she remembered her grandson’s words, or perhaps it was coincidence. Regardless, the torch has been proudly passed. — Jennifer H. Monaghan
Tough Enough to Be
Before turning 50 in August, I looked through old photos, counted gray hairs and tried to connect the dots. This photo is a marriage of both selves. I so badly wanted to make my father, William the III, proud — to be tough enough to play football. Today, I see an innocent queer kid, hoping to be accepted through masculine athleticism while secretly dying to be Mary Lou Retton. Although I once hid the less permissible, more feminine William who danced and rapped Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” behind closed doors, I now see I was always tough enough to be me. — William J. O’Brien
The Aftershocks of Us
We nearly lost everything: our house, our trust, our marriage. His private gambling felt like an earthquake beneath my feet. But through the aftershocks, I kept finding us — in small moments: our dog curling up between us at night as if to insist we belong together, his return to making my morning coffee, quiet proof of care I feared was gone. Love is not the absence of fracture; it is the decision to rebuild on cracked ground. We rose, shaken but together. Today I know what matters is not what we lost, but what we still choose to give each other. — Kate Schulze
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