Across the Lines
I bring Ted’s favorite: red-wine-braised beef and mashed potatoes. We sit in the rehabilitation center’s dining room. His body wrecked by a fall, he doesn’t know if he’ll go home again. My neighbor Ted and I are implausible friends. He’s 87, straight, white. I’m 51, gay, brown. We vote oppositely. Across years and our property line, he becomes a father figure. When I stand to leave, he says, “Let me give you a hug.” I bend down. “You’re one of my favorite people,” I say. He replies, “You are my favorite.” I sob the whole way back to our homes. — Putsata Reang
A Whisper in the Wind
The beach where my brother and I spent our childhood is all driftwood and rocks — better suited to fort-building and crab-searching than to swimming. In our youth, we ran along the wave break, screaming while dodging the other’s volley of bull kelp. As adults, we walked his dogs in the cool morning fog. Last July, I stood ankle deep in the cold water, a fistful of his ashes in my hand. My older brother, Michael, taken by an aneurysm at 36. “I miss you,” I whispered as the wind swirled his ashes through my fingers, falling softly into the Salish Sea. — Meredith Jewitt
A Reflection of What Lasts
Whenever I drive away from my mother’s house in Texas, she stands curbside, waving until I’m out of sight. I wave back, hand out the window, until she’s a speck in the rearview. My father does this, too. After our Wednesday dinners, he takes the long way home so we can drive side by side. At the final turn, we roll down our windows and wave goodbye. My parents divorced more than a decade ago, but in these mirrored gestures — in their insistence on loving me until the very last moment — I see the tenderness that once connected them. — Kaitlyn Read
Letting In the Light
One Saturday pre-dawn, my 6-year-old, Noah, rushed in: “Momma, we need to watch the sunrise.” Before I could argue, he pulled me down the steps and outside. We stood on the suburban street, heavy coats, pajamas, flip-flops, cold numbing our nose and cheeks. As orange light spilled across the sky, his mouth curled into a smile. How many more moments would we get like this? I tried to memorize the feeling, our clouded breath, his little fingers squeezing mine, a peaceful silence embracing us. For a moment, the world didn’t feel so dark. There was only light, only joy. — Lisa McCarty
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