The Baddie on the Bus
Harriette was the one friendly face on the bus of our Maryland private school. I asked if I could sit next to her? “Yes!” she said. Both of us were band nerds, scholarship kids. Harriette was the badass who threw a note out our bus window to a boy waiting for the bus to another school. We studied French, skipped class, rocked ’80s styles together. We’ve walked one another through weddings, divorces, losing our parents, having a child (hers, yet mine “should anything ever happen”). Nothing keeps us from answering the other’s calls, as long as we both shall live. — Shawna Kenney
Our Best Gift
“What do you want for Christmas?” I asked my teenagers. “Money,” was their simple answer. Two teenagers, one saving up for a summer in Europe, the other eyeing an electric dirt bike. I slid bills into money mazes I bought off Amazon, then watched as they cracked codes while laughing. With that, Christmas was over. One last look at the ornament with my late husband’s name, a quiet reminder that life is fragile and the best gift is time. Time with the ones still here, time with the ones we remember. “Good riddance, Christmas,” I thought. But also, thank you. — Julie Wilcox
A Sound Worth Smiling Over
Every first day, every substitute teacher, every appointment with a new doctor — they never get it right. Despite my first name’s relative simplicity, the list of its mispronunciations seems to stretch longer than its character count. Often, I reply with a simple “here” or nod in response to one of these falsehoods. I simply grew tired of offering corrections. Occasionally, there will be a person who reads my name aloud, but then looks at me, inquiring me of the accuracy of their assumption. Asking not because of my reaction, but because honoring me matters to them. That makes me smile. — Ammon Hawkins
Famous Last Words
“Sex machine,” my father, Noel, muttered, delirious from the morphine and cancer drugs. “Sex machine, sex machine.” Having come out as a gay man 10 years before, he’d found a loving, if occasionally inappropriate, partner in Bill. It was Bill who had whispered this phrase to my father as my siblings and I gathered around his bed in the tiny hospital room. Although no child wants to hear their parent mention sex maybe ever, Dad had fought through decades of shame to have the freedom to love whomever — and however — he wished. As last words go, his were perfect. — Katharine Sokoloff
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