Our rescue game
The year our father left, I thrashed about on my big sister’s shaggy blue carpet before bed, as if I’d fallen overboard. Melanie would hoist me into the bottom bunk, singing as I dozed off. Our rescue game got real one winter day at the bus stop. I bent down to pack a snowball. When I stood – clap! — I was hit in the face by Melanie’s own icy projectile. Stunned, I started to run and then passed out. Melanie started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then carried me home. Our father never came back. But my sister is still here, healing life’s worst wounds and breathing joy into my daily life. — Jodie Sadowsky
‘Something important’
Our children do daily “mitzvahs”, or good deeds, for the Hanukkah Christmas season. Every evening they pull index cards with suggestions from an envelope. One night our 7-year-old’s mitzvah was “Send someone you love a card in the mail.” Although he had to send the card to someone he didn’t live with, he insisted on sending it to me because he had “something important” to tell me. I said ok, we’ll send it to my office. A few days later I got a card at work that said, ‘I love you mommy. You’re one of my favorite people.” — Nora Gomez Strauss
Compatible Luggage
In the eight months we’ve been together, we’ve experienced unemployment, the deaths of friends and family, global protests for racial justice, national elections, a Capitol uprising, and a pandemic. He once said to me: “The older we get, the harder it is to find a partner: we have to be compatible not only, but also our baggage.” I thought that was crazy, but in the end the baggage we brought into our relationship couldn’t coexist in our bubble. Despite everything we danced, cooked and sang. Our relationship ended, but our time spent together lightened my burden. — Crystal Yang
Creating a new life
New out and newly single, I attended my first Pride at the age of 56. With trepidation I did a “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian” tank top. “It’s like a giant gay craft fair,” my son said. I laughed. That’s exactly what it felt like: a craft fair where everyone could be themselves and love who they wanted to love. I saw two women holding hands. I had left a 30-year marriage to a lovely man and a lifetime of heterosexual privileges for just such a moment. Four years later, I returned with a wife and a life on my own terms. — Suzette Mullen