The third ‘fourth’ is the charm
While I was dancing, another grad student said, “I know someone who dances just like you.” “No one dances like me,” I said; besides, I pursued women. But the following semester, when I saw Steve, an outspoken male student in a turtleneck, my whole body quivered with passionate interest. When I saw him dancing later, I was offended: “I don’t dance like that!” It’s funny that my dancing that night piqued his interest. Within four months of meeting, I proposed on the 4th of July weekend. Four months later, he said yes. Now, married for a long time, we still dance, a little on each other. — Michelle mood
Don’t cry for me
“I hate it when people cry at funerals,” my mother said. “When should they cry?” I have asked. She looked at me like I was crazy. I knew her answer: never. But she cried, when she thought no one was looking, for my dead father, the love of her life, and for my brother, lost in the street. I threw her a party when she passed away. She would have liked it. Some mourners cried, despite the fact that I shouted “Don’t Cry!” on the cake and put a small stern photo of her in the blue icing. — Susan Parker
An envelope with photos
I remember Mom brought you home to our Moscow apartment, a little life wrapped in a white blanket. We shared a bunk bed for years. You threw yourself to the floor, throwing a tantrum – Grandma wanted you to take your summer reading seriously. We both longed for our absent fathers. You often expressed yourself fully and I envied your fearlessness. I played a good girl: disciplined, wounded, inhibited. I moved far. We grew apart. Until you found our old photos and sent them to me for my birthday. And there we were: my hand firmly on my little sister’s shoulder. — Gloria Novikova
See the light?
“Help dad get off the oxygen,” my toddler prays for my dad every night. Before Dad’s Covid-19 hospitalization, my son was admitted with pneumonia. Only 2, he knows the pricking of needles, the web of tubes, the tickling of plastic in the nostrils. “Your nose itches,” he said sympathetically to Dad. On the Fourth of July, we avoided crowded fireworks displays to watch amateur shows from the front porch of my parents’ rural home in West Virginia. The sun went down, bats flew down, the sky exploded with color. My son and father held each other as they marveled at the light in the darkness. — Ann Rollins
