tin-can stilts – (on writing + other distractions)
Description: Read it and Eat
The blue and white school colors shined through the clear plastic wrapped package, a happy tassel pressed to the corner of the bag. Sighing with the bittersweet understanding that my oldest boy is actually graduating, I walked the parcel up the stairs and placed it unopened on his bed, where it will sit until his return home next week from a visit to his girlfriend and her family up in New Hampshire.
He face-timed me from there earlier – something no one over fifty should agree to – and seeing his face on the line, something I had been missing and yet hadn’t even realized how much, made me forget my vanity and just smile with glee. He is so gorgeous, I thought, and… changed. Although how could that be? He had only been gone a week. Yet, there was something different about him.
I studied the expression on his face as he talked about kayaking, hiking and working on their farm. He showed off his girlfriend and her sister’s artwork, while the girls peeked merrily in and out of my view. Is this the little boy I carried? The one I desperately wanted, even more so when at the time it seemed like he might never be. Two years we tried. Two years I went through the tumultuous and tortuous ups and downs of hormones and hope. The disappointment on the stick. The plastered smile in the fertil
tin-can stilts – (on writing + other distractions)