Changing How it Turned Out - Kate Bueler

Changing how it turned out. I didn't know how it would turn out yet. But I had pieced together snapshots of scenes in my mini series of my mind. A melodrama of my heart and hope for the future. The qualities I liked in him played perfectly in this short by me. See I have a girlhood crush syndrome that my early 30s hasn't seemed to break. I get crushes on strangers. On the barista. On the neighbor. On the friend. On the dude I made out with once. Excitement from the first time, the first time feeling the taste of infatuation dances around me as I skip on the way home. I can't shake the excitement I feel for someone in the beginning. The beginning of anything. It might be my favorite part of it all.

I guess part of my giddiness is for the lightness I feel for the real thing. The real thing that does warm me beyond the beginning to the depths of companionship. I used to fall hard and fast but took a vacation from the every moving fast bullet train to the very slow one making every stop. And it first it was fine. It was okay. But boredom started to seep in through my pores. I still wanted adventure. I still wanted intrigue. I still wanted to feel my heart pump with excitement. The slow train was slow. And I wanted more. But how to walk of the line of want I want long term and what I desire short term? Can I have both the excitement and stability as I walk on this tightrope of love with my heart jumping in and out of my chest to my sleeve and back again?

I don't know. But I do know. I need vacations. Vacations from the slow train. I pull the stop and jump out and try something new. Unplanned and spontaneous. And so easy just to be. And then I feel the warmth of another around me soothing the need for now. But later as the scenes of the future play out. Sometimes I want more scenes. I want more snapshots. And I can't help but wonder how it will turn out. In thinking about it, can I change how it will? Or the faith I feel in things coming together allows me not to change anything at all. See sometimes you meet someone while on vacation from the things you are supposed to be doing that makes the excitement and wonder grow inside as you think what will be next. For you. For him. And the excitement tastes good and I force myself not to wonder how it will turn out. Or to change the ending. I just want another line. Another paragraph. Another chapter. Of this book.

Changing How it Turned Out - Anna Teeples

I need to fry some bananas. I got nothing on today's prompt and I know that when I am stuck on writing, you write anyways. It was a day full of tough messages to people who needed to hear things that they did not want to hear. Somewhere in all of this muck, I know I am changing something. Like a giant splinter stuck in my soul needing to work it's way out. And now, the splinter is out and there's a small tender wound needing attention. I finally have that space to rediscover some of me that has been caked in mud. At the end of a long day, when you are feeling worn out and broken, you gotta change the day.

I picked up my little battle worn skittle, turned on the gas burner and sprayed a fine layer of oil. I peeled a banana and sliced the knife through the long length of the yellow meaty center. I placed a half on the hot surface with a sizzle. Sprinkling a dusting of cinnamon while smelling the sweetness ooze into the air, I wait patiently as the sliced side caramelizes just a bit before turning it over. In a matter of minutes, my mouth is watering and anxious for the first bite of warm banana. The beauty of this wonderful delight is the un-necessity of any other accompaniment, no need for chocolate or ice cream or warm dripping caramel. Just bananas, fried bananas. A perfect ending to soul shifting day.

Changing How it Turned Out - Melody Cryns

We live in a lovely little home amid trees and flowers with a garden, slightly unkempt in front. The house looks like an English cottage – it’s the house I passed by almost every day those few months we lived in San Jose near the Rose Garden neighborhood. But the house isn’t in San Jose – no, it’s right by the beach in Santa Cruz. We can walk to the beach with the harbor and the lighthouse.

My mother, who thankfully quit smoking when she was younger, is still around and comes to visit often. Megan invites her lovely friends over. She’s almost finished with high school and is graduating at almost the top of her class. My older kids are all very successful and happy, well adjusted young adults. I am making a living as a teacher and a writer, and I’m not stressed out about work at all. Every day I walk down to the beach with my ukulele and the dog and let her play in the waves – and I play my uke on the beach, sometimes alone and sometimes with all of my uke playing friends.

We make trips to San Francisco often, and usually stay at the Seal Rock Inn which overlooks the Cliff House and Land’s End – or we stay at Melissa’s house in Twin Peaks. I always travel down Highway 1 to get to San Francisco because who’s in a hurry?

Although I do have to teach at certain times, I’m pretty much free to do what I want and go wherever I want – I can always make ukulele jam get togethers and acoustic jams, and of course, there’s always time to sit and write.

If I want to take a nap in the middle of the day, I do it – lying down on a hammock in my lovely backyard.

Of course, I have a wonderful dependable car that never causes any problems at all – a BMW that gets me to where I want to go in no time at all, a zippy little car with all the bells and whistles anyone could want. Sweet car!

I’ve already published a book and another one is coming out soon. I’ve got it made in the shade, oh yeah! I’m going on a book tour soon with my ukulele so I can play music, sing and read from my writings. Life is really good – there’s always someone at the house to take care of the animals, and my daughter is so incredibly responsible. I trust her totally and completely. Oh and how can I forget my wonderful, hot loving boyfriend who is always there for me? He even travels with me and pays his own way and everything!

Sigh…

As I sit here and listen to Beatles music, I smile – thinking of how my life could have been, wondering if I truly would have changed the path if I could have.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale off El Camino with my incorrigible 18-year-old daughter Megan. She needs to get her act together and finish high school – and get a job of course. Our little dog likes to bark at everyone that walks by our apartment, and I had to leave her alone today because Megan’s off gallivanting around in Monterey, or Santa Cruz – not sure where. And she doesn’t want to come home. Not that I blame her, but still.

My little car overheated on the way to Sacramento for no apparent reason and the last time we lived in a house was when we lived in Oregon – but it was a sort of run-down house on a cul-de-sac just outside Salem, Oregon.

Mom passed away back in 1997 when the older kids were teenagers and Megan was only four, right before I fled from Oregon and moved back down to California with all of my kids – driving a piece of crap old Chevy Cavalier car that my son’s friend had given us – that was after the last car had broken down before that one.

We ended up having to move several times to dodge the high rents in the San Francisco Bay Area, and one time just because there were too many teenagers hanging around my place. There were always too many teenagers hanging around my place.

Now here I sit listening to Beatles music, wondering where Megan is and if Jen will be okay – that’s Jeremy’s girlfriend. She was so stressed out about the pregnancy and moving that she went on disability and she’s having a rough time. Now that my older daughter Melissa is getting a job, will she be able to start paying me back? Will she be able to pay off that bail bond I still get phone calls for because apparently they have my name and number?

Death - Jackie Davis-Martin

In general...there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
-Anne Lamott

Claire didn’t know what kind of woman she would be in the face of death. She hadn’t thought about it. It was even an odd consideration, later. I will be strong. I will be the sort of person whom others will marvel at. I will be private.

Anne Lamott was more likely referring to the characteristics one exhibited facing one’s own death. And, more likely, she was using death as a metaphor for crisis or catastrophe, or the “trouble” that the character faces. And in a story it’s not death that’s important, it’s the character’s reaction. Will she be noble? Will she be a mess?

Claire was a writer, one who had dodged real death in stories, substituting instead some other crisis—money, sexual tension, even, as she got more philosophical, the meaning of life, of certain actions one would take. Some of her friends wrote stories where family hovered at bedsides, or consulted anxiously with doctors. A few had near-death experiences, of high risk.

In these stories, the risky people survived to tell the tale. The family dealt with the bravery of the old man or the old woman who had lived a long and meaningful life and spoken something important at the end.

They could all discuss the reality of what had been written.

What happened, though, was that death came to Claire, and Claire had to face it. She didn’t know that facing it showed what kind of woman she was one way or the other. Take today, for instance, a small anniversary of that death. If she were writing about it, or re-creating such an event, she would certainly substitute something other than the golden sky outside her windows, the light tingeing the houses on high hilltops, sun glinting from windows like the spangles on the dance costumes both she and her daughter loved. She wouldn’t use that detail, though, because it didn’t fit the sadness she felt.

In a story she would have her character stand at the window and marvel that the beauty of the sky turning pink and blue and gold was still hers, that the birds’ chirping was comforting, something to truly listen to, and therefore of great value. She would have her character note the majesty of the lighted pillars in the garden across the street, the lights lighting the light of day just breaking, the stillness and silence of a day not quite under way.

In reality hers—Claire’s—was underway and, although she looked out the window at these things, she looked past her daughter’s pictures, and thought two things: Who was she? And why isn’t she here? Mostly she thought, Is it possible, really? Claire’s character wouldn’t mention that she couldn’t bear to look at those pictures, nor bear to remove them, since such wavering would show unsteadiness. People who looked for ready themes would pounce on that: denial. Claire disliked ready themes, exhibiting, at times, another of them: anger.

None of these behaviors was pretty, or of high character.

She’d pour herself another cup of coffee, strong and black and halved with milk, and write what she was trying to understand of life and death.

Anne Lamott. Claire didn’t know anything about Anne Lamott. What had she endured? But a writer didn’t have to endure, first hand. The writer’s job was to imagine.

And imagining, pretending, was the reality that made sense. Claire could pretend to be Claire, for instance. She would be brave because people liked to be with others who were brave, who were gay, who showed strength of character.

The other characters would like Claire better, feel more at ease, if she became a character, and not her true self. They’d like her better if they didn’t truly know the importance of what she was going through; they’d prefer her character to show strength in the face of this.

This.

This.

The Place Where She's Most Uncomfortable - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

I am visiting the house of a stranger. The couch and chairs in the living room are covered with plastic made to fit their yellow contours. Doilies and coasters cover each little table where family photos stand at attention in their upright frames.

A purple and black portrait of Jesus over the fireplace shows him hanging from the cross in a drawing that could be taken from a graphic novel, so lurid are the colors. The only cabinet holds china dishes and a collection of girl dolls, their little bow mouths bright red against their white faces. They are dressed in long gowns of another century. The legs of the furniture stand in little cups on the pale carpet.

I press my knees, clad in blue pants, together. My ankle bones touch. Then I notice: There are no books. Not one. No, there is one. A large Bible with a white leather cover, sits on a round table by itself on top of a lace runner. I smile at my hostess, the mother of my college roommate who is rebelling against everything. I have been listening to her for a year, and I see, in this, my first visit to her house, that with all her opinions and philosophical rants, she has told me nothing about her family.

``I don’t usually invite people,’’ she had said in our dorm room, pulling on her (illegal) cigarette.

``Thank you, Mrs. Whickett, for having me,’’ I say.

``We’re glad to have you, dear,’’ she says. ``We’re so curious about Mary’s friends from college. So you’re from Massachusetts?’’

``Yes, ma’am. The Boston area.’’

``What church do you go to there?’’ She looks excited and a flush comes across her pale cheeks.

``The Unitarian Church. I helped run the Sunday School in high school.’’

``Sunday School!’’ She looks pleased and glances at Mary who lounges (or slips off the plastic?) on an armchair. ``Do you read Scripture with the children?’’

``Well,’’ I shift on my own plastic, ``we make sure they know the Bible stories.’’

``The New Testament?’’

``Both,’’ I say. ``We study all religions.’’

``Unity Church, did you say?’’

``No, Unitarian. We believe in one Creator. That’s why that name.’’ She sits up straighter. I think she’s actually wearing a corset under her flowered dress. It’s hard to believe she’s the mother of my casual roommate or that my intellectually voracious friend came from this house.

``Do you take Jesus for your Savior?’’ she asks sternly, suspecting the worst. She’s right.

``Well, not exactly,’’ I say, realizing I’m about to go over the edge. ``We believe he was a great teacher and historical figure.’’

``Oh my dear,’’ she says, ``let me help you understand the truth.’’ She reaches for the Bible and opens it. Mary sits up quickly.

``Mother,’’ she says, ``we have to go out. We’ll be back for dinner.’’ She stands and signals me.

``Uh – thank you, Mrs. Whickett. See you later.’’ As we go out the front door, I go limp with relief .

``Did I do all right?’’ I ask.

``Great,’’ she says and grins at me. I can see we are not going to talk about this, and that we never will. ``Let’s go to the movies.’’

She puts her arm through mine, and we swing into the freedom of the fresh winter air.

The Place Where He's Most Uncomfortable - Maria Robinson

It was Stan's second full day in Tel Aviv. He'd woken up in the middle of the night and walked into a wall. He smashed right into the reality that he was not at home in New York on West Side Drive. Miriam had screamed when she heard the thud and turned on the bedside light. " Stan, Stan, are you alright? You're in Israel, Stan". Stan had found his way to the toilet and she could hear with sound of a light fountain. Holding him by the forearm, she ushered back into the unfamiliar bed in his wife's 'sabbatical" apartment.

The Place Where He's Most Uncomfortable - Francisco Mora

At the top of a hill, the lane next to the taxi was moving in a steady stream. The taxi waited, twenty cars away from the light in the left-hand turn, waiting for a covered green. In the taxi, Jason turned to look looked at the cars flowing by. His thinking entered into that momentary disorientation that happens when you look at a moving and stationary object simultaneously. He didn’t say it, would he, he couldn’t know without saying something, or would that send the cabbie into rage like the one yesterday? Jason would be late though, and they would say ‘you’re always late’. He hates that but slightly less than sitting in a cab that’s going to be late and not making a suggestion he knows without doubt would make them early.

Jason’s thought had to, so it did get out, “you know, it’s a lot faster if you go straight here and turn left up at El Dorado a couple blocks because,”

“But you can get stuck right there in this intersection if someone crosses the street. That’s why I didn’t go that way.”

That’s true. But how many people walk in LA? He didn’t say it.

“You’re the boss, man, I’ll go straight, no problem.”

“It’s your call, really. I’m always open to new ways of getting around to avoid jams, which you guys always how to do.”

Jason stared and tried to focus on the poster behind the passenger seat in front of him of local restaurants in Silverlake and Los Feliz near downtown. The driver wasn’t unfriendly, assertive maybe. However, the exchange was enough to make Jason’s neck automatically go into spasms–side effects of chemotherapy on the brain’s command center. Then the neck and the shoulders started.

The cab reactivated Jasons’ authoritative personality and his prowess as a fine driver, professionally trained, to race cars and motorcycles for the fun of it. Driving performance was something Jason had taken for granted until illness made him dependent on other drivers and taxis. Come to think of it, though, taxis might not be the place where he is most uncomfortable.

He thought about the joke with his wife, that the worst part of the chemo sessions (even the surgeries to get tumors out of the neck and the hips) wasn’t the feeling of black substrate moving in his veins instead of nourishing red blood. (That river of void.) The worst thing was dealing with his father’s driving, that lurching tank plodding out of Cedars-Sinai. That broke all records. They had to break the arrangement made when Jason was twenty-four, that Jason would always drive, to avoid disastrous clashes. Dad, according to Jason, used the brakes more than the gas, and created dangerous situations—which wasn’t true.

Keeping it Clean - Bonnie Smetts

Shadows dancing across his office wall had caught Dr. Sarin’s eye. He stared out the window at the trees whipped by the wind. His hand ran over the familiar grain of his wood desk and remembered his wife’s back and the shape of her spine. A year is along time to miss someone. He missed her company. Why hadn’t he been tenderer toward her. He remembered caressing the thickness of her legs and running his hands over the smooth firmness of her face.

Papers out of order on the far edge of his desk caught his eye and interrupted his memories. The sun shown on the sheets and without thinking he patted them into a stack. He moved the jar that held his pencils just to the right distance from the papers. He moved the blotter to align with the warn edge of the desk. He slid back from the desk.

His bookcase, he’d neglected his bookcase filled with titles from school and everything since. He’d added titles without thinking where they might best go. Someone had shoved several books on top of the ordered ones, horizontal stripes of color fighting the rhythm of the rest. He set about making order, moving one and then another, and then moving one and another again. It was like a game, like one of those games his friends played when they met. Chess or whatever they called it. Move here and move there. Keep the black markers one the white squares, or whatever they did.

It occurred to him that he might like to join them. He usually sat to the side and talked and enjoyed smoking with his friends. Rearranging. Would it be about arranging and rearranging? He pulled two books from the shelf and set them on the edge of the desk. They were of no interest to him. He must find someone to whom they would be.

Keeping it Clean - Arilia Winn

If you're not a very clean person no one will want to marry you
If your room is not clean no one will want to marry you
If you don't have a white smile, no one will want to marry you
If you don't have a small waist no one will want to marry you
If you can't cook, no one will want to marry you
If you can't get pregnant, no one will want to marry you
If you can't remember to shower and stay fresh, no one will want to marry you.
If you don't remember to be polite, no one will want to marry you.

No one will ever want to marry you. Break any of these laws and you will be just like the rest of the women in this world, a bunch of belligerents.

Madam Ceri was the toughest of all. I didn't realize it at the time but all of here if this no one this nonsense, made sense.
It was her job to set us straight, and she did.

I'm 25 now and I always make sure that I stay clean and look nice. One day I want someone to marry me.

Keeping it Clean - E. D. James

The stainless steel table gleamed beneath the bright examination room lights. The cranes body was stretched out in the center. It’s feathers gleamed from the cleaning it had been given when it was brought in from the field. The cranes body appeared shrunken to Olivia. She couldn’t tell if it was because it had lost weight due to its illness or if it was merely fact that its death had emptied it of the vitality of life. She photographed the body from several angles, focusing especially on the areas around the cranes beak and anus that were reddened by some unknown irritant.

After she had finished photographing the basic condition of the body she pulled on a mask and latex. She lay the crane on its back and positioned the light so that its breast and torso were brightly illuminated. She picked up a scalpel from the table to her right and then paused for a moment with blade just above the feathers. There was something about cutting into a wild creatures body that always disturbed Olivia. She knew it was irrational. She would chop a roasted chicken with a cleaver without flinching. She loved carving a turkey, carefully cutting the breast meat from the bone and separating the drumstick and thigh with a knife that cut through the tendons and popped the joint of bones apart. But there was something about violating the body of an creature that had been wild and free that was different from preparing a domesticated animal for dinner.

She slit the bird from the neck to the anus, laying it open. She used towels that she placed along its sides to keep its blood from dripping onto the floor. She reached into the body cavity and carefully felt each of the major organs. As she worked her way from the heart and lungs down to the gizzard and intestine she moved from a place where she was wondering why the bird had died to wondering how it stayed alive for so long. The digestive tract was looked as if it had been eaten away by some microscope swarm of piranha.

Keeping it Clean - Jennifer Baljko

Rosa leaned in the doorway and watched Oriol take out all the silverware from the drawer closest to the sink. He piled the soupspoons, butter knives, forks, and scissors on the countertop, and then took out the plastic container that housed them and placed it on the table. She watched him dampen a paper towel with a spot of soap, and begin the meticulous task of cleaning out the crumbs that may have slipped into the tray these last days.

Oriol had mannerisms neither of them could explain. Some sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior he had inherited from his grandfather, his mother had once told him long ago when he was still a boy. Rosa hadn’t seen many of those traits in her husband, only tiny slivers of oddities in all their years together. Nothing special had raised flags before. But, since the accident, Rosa noticed with alarmingly frequency how instinctively the ticks would suddenly show up. Keeping the silverware drawer clean, for instance, had now become an almost daily pre-occupation. Ten years ago, the poor man didn’t even know which slot held which utensil; Rosa would often find knives in the fork slot after Oriol tried to “help” her in the kitchen.

“So much stress weighing his heart down,” she thought sadly. She sighed quietly. Rosa knew better to interrupt his routine, to sour his mood. She wrung the dishtowel she was holding, and slipped out the kitchen, leaving her husband alone with his mental fixations.

Something Illegal - Judy Albietz

This afternoon my 2 ½ year old grandson announced, Bubbe, come on … time to take a nap. Read some books.” So, for the next half hour, we read about robots, penguins and trucks. He helped me turn the pages. He filled in some of the words since he remembered the story from last time. Then he wanted us to sing some of the Beatles and Peter, Paul and Mary songs we sang this morning while he ate his oatmeal. He finally settled on his personal favorite, Puff the Magic Dragon. He has most of the words memorized, particularly the part about painted wings and giant rings making way for other toys. His parents told me they aren’t wild about his learning this song. It truly is from a generation they don’t understand. They said they think the song is about pot. They’ve got it all wrong. It’s about a dragon and the little boy who was his friend and how the boy grew up and how the dragon missed his friend so much that he had no choice but to sadly slip into his cave. “Bubbe, what happened to the magic dragon?”

I started to tell him that the dragon was still there, in the cave, waiting for his friend to come back and play with him. But then I saw he’d fallen asleep. He had his bear tucked under his chest and he was hanging onto my little finger. I was glad I could wait for another day to answer his question at least with a partial truth.

Something Illegal - Christa Fairfield

A nest egg. Yeah that’s what she needed. But unless she was willing to buy a gun and doing something illegal, Vi didn’t see that in her future. And, with her luck she would hold up a 7-11 immediately after their money drop or a bank with an AARP tour of retired FBI agents.

Sitting on the increasingly heated bench, popping gum wads off the sidewalk with the tips of her new Vince Camuto sandels, she concided that maybe she should have bought a cheaper used car and kept some money for car insurance. She should have known that a UPS truck would back up over her precious car fourteen days after driving it off the lot. Who wouldn’t expect such a thing.

“You need to be prepared for the unexpected, Violet.” Her father had told her the night before as she sat drinking the last glass of white zinfandel on her parents four-by-four cement back patio.

“Spect your right, dad,” Vi slurred tipping back the last of the wine and licking her licks. “But right now, I think I’ll go to bed,” she pushed the white molded chair back and dislodged herself, “and dream of better unexpected things.”

How She Imagined It - Jennifer Baljko

She slid down the hallway, her socks of the fashionable not matching variety providing little resistance against the hard wood floor. One sock pink and orange, the other blue and white. She twirled around in her lime green and cotton white frilly skirt, yanking down at the pockets of her gray sweatshirt sweater. She sang some off-beat song she invented, something how she imagined how lunch would be and how there would be chocolate later. She’s 8 years old. Few things of great importance matter, but at the same time, everything matters and all at once everything is very important. She spins around her heading with foreign ideas she’s picking up in a foreign country. Her thoughts flit between what she thinks she knows what’s real and what she’s learning could be a different reality. Her twinkle with possibility.

How She Imagined It - Anna Teeples

Three weeks later, Chance walked out of the “Divorce Center” office door. Everything about this place she hated. The stained brown shag carpet, the thirty-year-old fake walnut wood desks that chipped at the seams, the stacks of messy banker boxes in every corner and the awful amber multi-sided hanging light pendant in the corner. Mark wanted to move things along quickly and with a short-term marriage and no children together, they hardly had time to co-mingle assets.

Feeling grimy and sleazy, getting a cheapo quickie divorce, the mediator inferred that somehow she wanted this. Chance didn’t want a divorce. In fact, what she imagined was that at the mid-point of her life she would be settling into a relaxing semi-retired life with her new husband as her only son went off to college. Over the last year, it was clear that Chance was willing to tolerate Mark’s rage. Somewhere along the way she had given up on being happy with her partner and was willing just to ride the dead horse. Mark was absolutely the dead horse. He talked about death, about wanting to quit. To the outside world, he appeared to be jovial and carefree. Yet the more intimate side relieved that he was miserable, and felt he had no purpose. He just wanted out, to walk away, back to his life as man with his own personalized barstool at the neighborhood pub. This life worked for him and he liked it.

What She Got Out of It - Christa Fairfield

The indulgence was beyond her discipline. She wondered the cobbled streets inhaling the humid aroma of time past swirled with this Tuesday. She licked her lips. Her eyes darted to the rough stone walls that drew her fingers. How could this city have preserved itself while her seventies suburban box was nearly falling over. The difference between quality construction and worthy architecture.

She stepped up to the gelato counter. God she loved this little exterior invitations to indulge in the creamy sweet goodness. What would she have today? She reviewed the flavors chocolate, hazelnut, vanilla. She realized she was working her way through the flavors every day. If she didn’t take anything else out of Venice, she at least got calories. Rich, delightful, stick to your hips calories. It wasn’t just the gelato there was the pasta, the risotto, and polenta mixed with fruits of the sea that she had only seen on the cooking channel back home.

Fragola, she struggled to pronounce to the boy’s efforts at English. Grazie they offered in unison. She turned east seeking the window of carved wooden everyday objects. Was her favorite the bundle of balloons or the coat rack with a man’s coat and hat appearing to hang but actually one with and smooth connected umbrella carved in as if it were propped against the rack. The warm hues of reds and gold’s felt alive. If it weren’t for the ever-present voice of her mother who was long passed reminder her “not to touch”, Carol would have caressed the masculine piece.

What She Got Out of It - E. D. James

The envelope was the same as the first two. White. Cheap. No return address. Postmarked from Blagoveschensk in Siberia. After the first one she had investigated what connections to her work there might be in Blagoveschensk. She found that the Amur branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences had a facility there. It leant credibility to what the envelopes contained, but it didn’t answer the question of who had sent them.

The first envelope had contained three photographs were notes in ledger regarding radiological experiments conducted in a Soviet gulag prison in the early 1950’s. Audrey had taken the photos to the Russian language department at U. C. Berkeley to get the pages translated. The notes were an accounting of hospital beds, thermometers, spirometers and other equipment that were shipped to an unnamed camp.

The second envelope had contained a list of peoples names with dates. A note accompanying the list stated that the names where prisoners who had been killed in the radiological experiment. The note was printed in block letters with thick black marker. Both of the envelopes had also contained notes written with the same blocky style stating that Olivia’s life was in danger if she continued to be a part of the Arkhara project.

She pulled her simple silver letter opener from her top drawer and slid the thin tip up under the flap of the third envelope. She carefully slid the blade along the fold neatly cutting the envelope open, then set down the opener, and pulled the contents out. A photograph of an old graveyard with a few graying wooden crosses sticking up like broken teeth from a field was on top. She could see nothing identifying where the photo was taken. The second sheet was another of the notes with the blocky lettering. This one was more blunt than the previous two. It read, “You will be killed before you can leave for Siberia if you do not resign from the project immediately. Please heed this warning.”

What I Got Out of It - Lisa Jacobs

“You’re so American Michael said to me. Michael was Canadian. Canadians are pleasant and genuine. Good people. Canadians are good people. Americans too, but sometimes a bit too arrogant, and not enough aware of what they don’t know.

Michael and I were friends; he worked for a Jewish human rights NGO (nongovernmental organization, sometimes also referred to as civil society organization, or CSO, although this is a more recent label) and I worked for the World Health Organization, or WHO. As in double u; H; Oh. Not “who”. Very gauche to call it “who” in global health circles.

We were at a dance to benefit something in Uganda – I’m not sure what it was, whether a women’s capacity building and empowerment program, an orphanage, a school, but it was a good cause. And, with a lot of partying Africans comes a great dance party. Only problem was, the light was too bright. We were in the basement cafeteria / large room with lots of fluorescent flood lights. Not conducive to dancing. But nobody seemed to be in charge of the lights; nobody took action.

So I went out in search of the light switch. I found a large panel, near one of the doors to the hall. I fussed and found a good combination – hall lights bright, dim lights in the room. More people started dancing.

That is when Michael called me out for being an American. Apparently only an American would have the ‘chutzpah’ to turn the lights off, without authorization. Everyone else was disappointed with the ambiance, but didn’t think it was up to them to do something about it.

Poison - Jackie Davis-Martin

Poison. How can a veteran English teacher, such as I am, not think of Hamlet when she thinks of poison? Hamlet: The Poisoned Kingdom was the title of one of the reels I borrowed from the Country Library that lent out such things—a wonder, I thought in that day (although “wonder” associates itself with The Tempest)—for teachers to show their classes. That was in the 70’s, even before, in New Jersey, and, as I see it from my old perspective here, aloft in my third-story San Francisco flat, it was a time of Technicolor simplicity.

I realize the time wasn’t simple: life was fraught with tensions, mostly about money, many about sex. Then there was the raising of the children, which I saw as somewhat incidental to my job as a teacher. The classroom always came first; if the kids had school off, they came to my high school classrooms with me. They tagged along behind me to the rehearsals in the auditorium. As toddlers they sat huddled in the back seat as I dropped off the debate team members at their homes.

“You’re always reading Hamlet,” my young son said. “What’s it about?”

So, I told him the story of Hamlet, while he cuddled against me, sucking his thumb. He was probably eight. He sucked his thumb late. And he followed Hamlet.

The king has poisoned Hamlet’s father the ghost tells him. Hamlet must revenge. He doesn’t want to, though, not really. So he delays while the king gets the upper hand. In a moment of frenzy he kills the wrong person, Polonius, by stabbing blindly through a curtain.

(My son removed his thumb, holding it wetly for a moment in front of him. “Polonius. He’s the old guy, right?”)

Yes. The father of Hamlet’s girlfriend, who drowns herself in despair. The Poison? Enter the girlfriend’s brother, seeking his revenge. He’ll use a poisoned foil to duel Hamlet. The king will prepare a poisoned chalice (“That’s a big metal goblet for wine”) to give to Hamlet, just in case. But it doesn’t work out: the two duelists wound each other in an exchange, the queen drinks the poisoned chalice, and Hamlet, realizing, shoves the rest of the wine down the king’s throat and then stabs him with the poisoned sword for good measure.

Hamlet thought too much. Hamlet cared too much. Hamlet suffered too much. Or, the part I liked best: Hamlet loved his mother too much. (As a mother, I didn’t see the harm in that.) But he didn’t stand a chance in that place so contaminated with greed and selfishness, so corrupt with decay, like Yorick’s skull, which he handles thoughtfully.

Poison is Hamlet.

I know, I know. It’s also Snow White, or the Sleeping Beauty. It’s in lots of things: Browning’s poetry, Madame Bovary, Arsenic and Old Lace, Hitchcock mysteries.

Taking poison must be harder than stories make it seem.

But people use it metaphorically, as did Shakespeare. “He was poison.” “What a toxic thing to say!”

But let’s end this: my kids grew up, I moved away and began again, one of the steadying influences in my life the fact that Hamlet stayed. He settled into new classrooms. We all grew old, one of us died. There was no poison in my life: none. I mean, real poison.

Poison - Kate Bueler

Poison. It was hard to know what was the man's poison as he entered the cafe door first opening the hard wooden framed glass and then the thin screen to step into the room. It was hard to know what the man's poison had been or would be. There he stood as my eyes shoot him a look up and down the look of junior high in adulthood moves across my face. I am judging him. I am laughing at him. In my head. There stands a man in a full black trench coat that reaches to the end of his calfs and sunglasses that never moved from the position on his face on his nose resting there. In one hand he has an oversized blue bucket and in the other a pint glass. What was this man's poison? What had willed him to dress in all black and bring in his accessories of a bucket and a pint glass? Was he coming in from a long night gone terribly wrong or right? Was he mourning the loss of something? Was he there to fix something? Was he on his way to fight crime welding a bucket and a pint glass?

This man is why I love this city. You never know what you will see. Weird here is just plan normal and weird anywhere else would never turn a head here. I stare at this man and watch him interact with the barista as if he is wearing the uniform of his sunday best or workout clothes. He acts normal. For this is normal for him.

I can't help but wonder about him so much that when he leaves my inquisitive mind that can't be held still goes to the barista, a man with an unkept beginning of a beard, a v neck shirt with a small hole on the top, and a longish torso and wide shoulders of masculinity. Whats with the dude and the bucket and the pint glass? He smiles and his eyes lighten as he throat reverberates in laughter. Oh he comes in that outfit everyday- and he always has that pint glass. That pint glass he stole from us. I try to get it back every time. But even when I take it away from him. He leaves with it. Not sure how. When I'm not looking. It is weird I don't take a plate from a restaurant and bring it back when I return. And the bucket- I offer. He extends- he is always working on something and sometimes its a bucket or something else. He comes in everyday. Everyday in that trench coat and glasses caressing the pint glass.

And that is where asking makes sense. I have no idea what this guy is made of- I have no idea his poison. But what I do know is he brought me and barista and others the free entertainment of uniqueness. And that I like to drink. Daily. With or without a pint glass in hand.

Poison - Maria Robinson

Instead of getting really really old, how about poison?
I'll dress up to the nines in a black cocktail dress, high heels and pearls and make my way to the swishy bar at the W Hotel. There, I'll camp out with tequila shots and flirt with all comers.

And when I reach the end of the night, I plop those strichnine capsules down into my last drink. The white billowy curtains in the front of the doors will flutter one last time as the revolving doors turn and then I'll be gone.

Saturday the Chron headline will tell it all.

What Happened Next - Bonnie Smetts

Marjorie couldn’t help what happened next. Shivers ran down her back and propelled her away from the snake and out into the crowd. She couldn’t control her revulsion to the reptile or the terror at what might happen next. She pushed out of the knot of people and walked.

She didn’t know she had been walking until a rush of saris startled her. She stopped and let people stream around her. One direction all she could see was colors and people and more people. In the other direction the same. The group that hid the snake charmer had disappeared. She did not recognize the curled top of one pandal from the one further away. How long had she been wandering. Where was Renee.

She took two steps in one direction. She stopped. The sounds overcame her and the people passing on the street began to stare. Or were they simply staring at her staring desperately at them. She turned as if on a pedestal. Not one thing looked familiar. She stepped again, praying she’d see something ordinary and familiar. Renee or Ash or a miracle.

Panic, deep and hot rose from her feet. Not panic at seeing a snake, not at kind that could come and go in an instant, but searing and infinite. She was lost.

“Marjorie, Marjorie.” Renee’s cry broke through her fear. “Marjorie.” She moved toward the sound of her name. She pushed into a group of women who were laughing and carrying one. Right through the middle of them. “Marjorie.” Her name drew her along. “Marjorie.” But her name began drawing away, gaining an unbearable distance. “Marjorie.” She pushed her way through the crowd following the diminuendo of her name. She screamed. “Reneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” She stopped where she was and screamed. Everyone around her backed away; they stopped and looked with embarrassment at the white woman screaming in their midst, in the midst of their celebration, in the midst of a happy time when people did not scream in fear.

What Happened Next - Vanessa Hsu

What happened next took a few weeks of rehashing and piecing together by the five of us to finally nail down, a causal sequence of events and a somewhat orderly timeline of the events that happened. It was surprising to me how difficult it was. If I had to describe it in three sentences, like I did to the police, I would just say: “They came in and robbed our house in the middle of our BBQ. I guess we had left our door halfway shut to not bother going back downstairs.” There, I did it in two. If I had to add a third, I would say, “this kind of thing shouldn’t happen here, should it?”

In reality though, between my sister and her husband, myself and two of the earliest arriving friends, Mona and Jack, it took us several to remember all the details and resolve the conflicting ones of what happened after the four men, spastic, seemingly as or more nervous than we were, came in with guns pointed and ski masks on. We had the usual minutes, perhaps a few quarter hours, after the fact where everyone looks around, eyes shooting in a few different directions and the creeping sensation in our skin slowly subsided (at least that’s the way it was for me and how I thought everyone else felt). Then there was the obvious, “let’s call the police” and before we even did that, we looked at each other and had to slowly pull the information out of each other, were they three guys? Four? Did we think they had accents? What build were they? Guys, guys, really do we have to start racially profiling? No, that’s not what we’re doing, we’re being factual. Bickering – the leftover stress spilling over to our scared psyches into silly arguing. Then we had to try to remember what was taken, what was taken? Laptops, jewelry in a few boxes, stuff in wallets. That was difficult too, how is it so easy to become so hazy?

Then the cops came, and feeling like we were doing something about it felt better, and not having had our locks broken in helped the feeling of security sink back in a lot faster, and having others around, sirens, note-scribbling, people measuring distances on the floor and reciting our inventory back to them – it felt better because we had to pretend we weren’t shaken and shake off the confusion and fear.

And then followed a week of silence, everyone staying back in their own routines, getting back to them and not speaking much about it, until we had dinner again at a restaurant this time (public place, just in case it was our party of five which brought bad luck, I thought and then mocked my superstition). But we had to fill out a detailed police report, so what happened in the few minutes after the four (really, four? Not three?) walked in? We sat down at dinner and tried mapping it out. It was both amusing how hard it was to remember, and it was also strange how foreign and distant the events felt.

It started like this, they said, “everyone, freeze!” and came in pointing in different directions, standing in a semicircle with their backs protecting each other. I’m sure they saw that in a movie somewhere just like we had. And then, what happened?

What Was Behind the Door - Judy Albietz

Since time had no meaning in the darkness, Josh couldn’t tell how much time had passed since the lights went out. He wasn’t even sure if he’d been conscious the whole time. He wasn’t receiving any of the normal signals from his body. No thirst or hunger pangs. He felt numb. Even though his brain rumbled with anxiety, he couldn’t feel his heart pounding with fear. All he sensed was that he was there—suspended in space, watching the nothingness around him. Over and over again, he reviewed the thought that he might be dead. Then he worried that he might still be alive. He dreaded whatever was going to happen next. He hoped something—anything—would happen to break the monotony.

He heard a snapping sound to his right and the outline of a closed door appeared. It was as if someone had drawn the door on a blackboard with white chalk. He would have gasped if he had a voice. He didn’t think it was possible to be even more possessed by fear. He didn’t want the door to open. At the same time, he was panicked it would remain closed, keeping him in the dark.

It was now or never. He had to make a decision. He had to somehow will that door to open. It was the only way he would ever hear her voice again—see her face again.

Even before he finished this thought process, Josh found himself on the other side of the door. At first the sunlight was blinding. After a few seconds he was able to look out on the scene around him. This was the world he had earlier seen on the panel. He sensed movement in his body. He was able to bend his head down. The nausea returned as he looked at his hands. legs and feet. They were not his.

What Was Behind the Door - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

Each door keeps secrets.
I hold my breath the moment
before I reach, touch,
Turn the knob, push an inch,
Then wide open. I know,
For instance, the back hall
Will be dim, innocently furnished
With brooms, dust pan, wine rack,
The door to the little elevator
That comes from the garage.

But. There could be a body
Slumped against the wall,
An intruder waiting
To spring, enter and steal,
A flood leaping or fire raging.
Instead, so far, I find
Silence edged by the even hum
Of the refrigerator
On the other side of the wall,
Comforting tools of keeping house.
Until I come, next time.

What Was Behind the Door - Melody Cryns

Everyone always knew me as the fun, happy-go-lucky kid without a care in the world, careening down the street on a skateboard and swerving away from anything or anyone that got in my way – Opening the door into my consciousness is another story altogether because it’s not easy.

What is my story? I mean, really? Just the other night, I sat at an Irish Pub in Belmont with Belo, my fellow student at NDNU – we had shared our stories and words in graduate creative writing classes – his story the most amazing of all – Belo was assaulted in San Francisco while working at a bar in the Castro in San Francisco and, as a result, he is now completely blind. His memoir and stories revolve around his journey and begins two weeks after he realizes he is now completely blind and his life has changed drastically.

Belo’s stories were always among my personal favorite – he’d have me or someone in the class read, and at the student readings when we all got to read for 20 minutes, his reader was right before me. I hadn’t actually seen Belo since we graduated last May – so reconnecting with him and my professors finally was truly inspiring.

So there we sat in the Irish pub, me, Belo and Kerry, one of our professors who really wants me to pursue my children’s fiction story, “The Fate of Stubs” about the young girl in San Francisco who can’t have a three-legged guinea pig. The story takes place in the 1960’s in San Francisco, of course. But in the end, I went for the creative nonfiction about the struggling single mom with four kids – there are so many stories and people say that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Among my stories in my massive collection, 250 pages of which formed into my creative thesis for my master’s program, reside so many struggles, fun, music, love and adventure – and the door creeks open in certain areas, letting my consciousness in, allowing a bit of light and insight – yet the door hasn’t burst wide open yet. I’m opening it rather slowly – my mother always said I was stubborn and that I always did everything in my own time.

Well, c’mon. I’m going to be a Grandma and still I haven’t done anything with all the material I have. It’s time. I used to promise my kids when we struggled and sometimes barely had enough money for groceries or rent, “Some day, I’ll publish a book and we won’t struggle anymore, and we’ll be able to go on real vacations and have a lot more fun!”

My kids were so trusting, they believed me. They believed in my dream…but really it was a way to keep the hopes alive that we wouldn’t lose our place to live, and the dream always burned in my heart…yet I wasn’t able to quite get my hundreds of words out there, get them over the edge.

Last year when I read from my work, I looked out on to the people at the beautiful Ralston Hall Mansion at NDNU in Belmont – and I saw, mixed in with students, my son Jeremy and my daughter Megan, my friends, Phoenix and Debby – and my long-time friend of 30 years, Heidi, who had flown down from Washington to be there for my reading. “Do you want me there for the reading or the graduation?” Heidi had asked. Of course the readings…that’s what’s really important.

Two of my kids couldn’t make it – so when I read the first piece about leaving Germany with the kids to start a new life as a single mom when the kids were young, who did I look straight at? Jeremy. Then I read a piece about trying to get out of the house with three kids in grammar school and a full-time job ending with the “Bong Incident,” a very funny piece about finding a bong in my kids’ bedroom and throwing it out a second story window.

The stories are there, and the door has opened – but what is it about, really and truly?

Melody grew up in San Francisco in the 1960’s right near the Haight Ashbury – she and her friends and siblings played among the hippies and the sounds of conga drums beating and constant music playing, along with smells of patchouli and pot blended with the eucalyptus trees in Golden Gate Park. Melody always pictured herself being independent and living the Bohemian life – she told her mother she admired the people standing on street corners playing guitars because they were doing exactly what they wanted to be doing. Of course, Melody’s Mom, although she was cool and loved the Beatles and the Grateful Dead, freaked out.

But life didn’t work out the way she expected it to, as often is the case. Melody married a guy in the military she met on a BART train going from San Francisco to Hayward – and ended up living in Germany for several years.

Then a few years later, she left Germany with three kids, $200 and seven suitcases and ended up being a struggling single mom. Yet memories of her childhood never left her – both the good and the bad, nor did the music or her love for the Beatles…as she and her kids struggled to survive in a harsh world that wasn’t always kind to single moms, there was always music, fun and adventure. She has a fourth kid along the way and her mother passes away suddenly – and they make a big move from Oregon to California, close to San Francisco where Melody grew up.

The Memory I Wouldn't Let Go Of - Vanessa Hsu

There was a particular taste to mangoes that summer. They would spew juice, the stringy fibers in the fruit barely holding up as soon as our teeth sank in, and our hands would end up enveloped in orange pulp without even pressing that hard. Sometimes they'd be much sweeter than others, bordering on overripe -- there were so many mangoes that we would pick them up from underneath the tree shades instead of beating them all down with a stick while still hanging.

There was a particular smell to the air before the rain too (but it was always right before raining) -- thick and muggy, stuck to our nostrils. We'd try to cut through the heat with ice cream overdose, but even the ice cream would have trouble dripping down the few feet to the ground. The melted layer around the still-iced ice cream, thick like the air around us, would sluggishly slide down its own surface, eventually release and suspend itself midair for a few seconds, and then finally, forming a multicolor drip painting on the concrete below our feet. It seemed that everyone was eating and painting and raining ice cream.

The taste of the rain was also different. It was tropical rain -- a mesh of humidity surrounded us at all times and when it decided to fall, it was a delirious release, curtains of water, layers upon layers of delicious heavy drops so big our ice cream paintings would vanish in a second and the mangoes still on the ground were beaten down to pulp, releasing their sweetness as the fragrance that would then envelop everything around us.

It was nature's assault to my senses that summer, and the smells and tastes are stuck on me.

The Memory I Wouldn't Let Go Of - Lisa Jacobs

The first memory I have of my overwhelming insecurity was when I was 5 years old. 5 years old! Are children that young supposed to feel so insecure? My friend Sophia, who had to be my friend because we were born 8 days apart and our moms met at the playground and our older siblings were friends, was inviting me to her new friend Liane’s house. Sophia went to a different elementary school from me because we lived in different school districts, although only two blocks apart. And Liane apparently had a phenomenal collection of Barbie’s. I really wanted Liane to like me because I wanted to play with her Barbie’s. I only had one, and I didn’t have any cute outfits or dreamhouses or cars – my mom sewed the few outfits I could dress her in. So as I walked to Liane’s house, I looked down and saw the freckle I hated on my right wrist. I covered it, and decided I would keep it covered when I met Liane. It was ugly and I didn’t want her to decide she didn’t like me because of my ugly freckle. The freckle is barely noticeable now, surrounded as it is with all of the other freckles that have popped up over the years.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that all my fears about being a loser were confirmed. Really and truly confirmed. I was a freshman in high school (one year younger than my peers because I had skipped a grade in elementary school) and I had to ride a long bus ride from the Marina district to Lowell High in the Sunset. My sister was a senior that year, but we never sat together on the bus. We would always sit in the single seats, on the right side of the bus. My friend Sarah, who lived in the Richmond, would sometimes catch our bus, and sometimes not, later in its route. Sarah had gone to a different middle school than I had; we met in a summer program and I was excited to be her high school friend. She had a whole group of cool friends – some of the girls even had boyfriends. Sarah didn’t. She was a big girl, like me, but she was a jock, and I wasn’t.

So on this fateful day Sarah’s group got on at their stop and I left my single seat to hang out with them for the rest of the ride in the back of the bus. That night, my sister told me that as she was sitting at an open window, she overheard Sarah say, “Oh no, there’s Lisa” when Sarah spotted me on the bus. My sister thought I should know this important piece of information. I didn’t blame her; it was useful to know that I was not liked. I never hung out with Sarah and her friends again.

The Memory She Wouldn't Let Go Of - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

The young woman stood on the flat deck of the catamaran in her bathing suit holding the boom as if it were a ballet barre. He held the tiller with a light hand and guided the little boat through the breezes of the Sound, watching her go through her routine.

Feet in first position, ankle to ankle, toes apart making a V. Slide out into a point, back, out. Demi plie at the end. His fond gaze warmed her. He had said he always wanted a dancer. She was an amateur, but their shared enthusiasm for her ambition bonded them, kept her going to classes and looking for a group to perform with.

They formed a complete two, complete in the summer air on the sparkle of waves, under afternoon clouds that swelled in the blue sky and climbed as the wind strengthened and the boat picked up speed. He moved the tiller deftly, at ease with the speed of the wind and capturing its energy with the sail. He sailed intuitively, his muscles moving easily under his skin, as if he never had to be taught. His brown skin gleamed in the sunlight and his thick brown hair fell over his eye.

Her movements and the sweat that trickled down between her breasts encased in the red bikini top promised them both the intimacy to come later in the day, another thread in the new secret bond that grows between newlyweds. She felt him watching her brown legs stretch and lift, her knees thrusting forward over her bent legs like his warm hands stroking her, his gaze, her receiving it, the promise of lovemaking to come.

He turned the boat to a deserted shore. No buildings in view, no people. She jumped onto the sand and hauled on the crosspiece of the bow. He joined it and they hauled together until it slid high up away from the little waves lapping on the sand. The tide was going out.

They worked together without speaking. He hauled the sail down and they rolled and tied them. She coiled lines and stowed them under the seat. She took the canvas bag with the food, sleeping bags, blankets and clothes to the beach. She spread it under a tree near a bush, arranged the goods and food around the edge of the blanket, a little home, a girl playing at keeping house.

He sat cross-legged on the blanket, watching her set out the food, watching her in her new role as caregiver, wife, no longer taking care of herself only. She knelt to her task feeling her role as pleasant, arousing, happy, never wondering why she relinquished her independence so easily, or when she would feel it again. For now, these bonds felt delicious, as did his hand stroking her spine and pulling her towards him. They embraced, tasting each others’ brown salty skin, and fell to the blanket, kissing. For now, this was enough.

Memory - E. D. James

The crumpled skull contained in the camouflage cap stained Olivia’s memory. She knew she had been right, but wrong. She should have merely stood and shouted and scared the crane and diverted the shot. Then there would be no wrong . But some force had overtaken her. A lifetime of frustration at men who would destroy things that were so fragile with weapons that were such overkill. The worst thing about these men was their egos. Their bragging about being able to kill a defenseless creature in a completely unfair fight. She ran into these men in the bars and restaurants in the little towns that were her home when she was working in the field. Lately she’d begun to run into them at the fundraisers that SWF held. Their lust for killing had be slightly diverted into doing something good by preserving wetlands so there would be more birds for the hunt.

Seeing that man in the camouflage with his gun worth thousands of dollars with the calibrated sight and custom ammunition about to kill an endangered crane had just pushed her to a place that was elemental. She’d acted before she could think. Now she couldn’t get the picture out of her mind.

Giving Up - Bonnie Smetts

A day, it took one day after the conversation with Charlotte. Her daughter had said what she said, the truth. It took a day, one day for the knowledge of what she’d done to seep in. How can you take a child and raise her in a strange place and not have ruined her life, set the course of her life so permanently wrong.

Marjorie was shocked she could now sit in the salon chair and have her hair cut. She starred at her hands and felt the truth of what she’d done. She’d done it. That was it. She’d done it.

“Mrs. Patton, can you look up in to the mirror? You’re squirming a bit today. I can’t make cut your hair evenly with your head sloping down.”

Marjorie laughed, a tiny expression of embarrassment. “I guess your gentle hands on my head were putting me to sleep.”

“That’s OK, ma’am. I’ve had ladies fall asleep on me before. I take it as a compliment. That is unless were talking.” Now the hairstylist laughed.

“How is your Lucy?” Marjorie watched herself walk into the oncoming saw blade.

“She’s such a doll, that girl. You know she’s turning 5 this weekend. She’s a big girl now. And she’ll tell you that.”

As in a nightmare when you scream but no sound comes out, but you know this time you’re going to scream loud enough for someone to hear you…Five years old. Charlotte’s age when they moved away. “And she’s in school near where you live?”

“Of course, and my mum watches her when I’m here.” The hairstylist continued to snip and gently raise and fluff Marjorie’s gray hair. “Have you thought of a rinse? We could make your hair a bit shinier, a bit brighter you know. Not a big change.”

Marjorie starred at herself. The person who set her child’s future without knowing it would be irreversible. “Yes, I’ll …no, I hadn’t thought about it. But why not today.” Marjorie was beyond thinking about making the best of herself, but why not the rinse.

Giving Up - Kate Bueler

Giving up. Giving up to me has always been a foreign concept. Something I knew existed in some other realm but nothing I had a close relaitonship with. Nothing I had spent much time with. Nothing I had smelt under my beautiful imperfect slightly crooked nose. Nothing I had tasted before inside the fine lines of lips I have. It was what other people did. For I didn't take no for answer. That had its failure too, the not giving up.

Watching someone give up before your eyes happens regugularly for me. It happens mostly with the kids. I see her eyes frustration with her inability to get her multipication tables as I hold the card in front of her. I don't know it, she says with words and with her eyes and the crinkles around and growing on her face. See she is good at most things. Reading chapter books in the beginning of reading and the weekly pursue of the week. Lingutically she excels but this math thing-it takes work. And she gives up as you lay the cards out to play them. But you the caretaker won't let her give up. She can't. For these printed cards with numerals and lines and xs will not be her only challenge but for right now feels like the biggest she ever will have. We can't be good at everything- I know- but she is still learning. We have to practice. It takes time. And it so easy to give up upon that bump in that road making us have to twist and turn in ways we aren't comfortable.

With him math comes easier but many things do not and it is hard to feel accomplished in the glow of the older sister. He is the dectective of the house able to find anything lost. He will find it. He is brave in his choice to stand in front of his classmates and talk about being made fun of. And he dreams of playing on the giants. The major league team. He looks at me with all believing eyes and says, you know all the pros started in little league. And they did. He is right. But his only relationship with a ball, a baseball has been being scared of it. I don't want him to give up. So we practice. First with a tennis ball and without a glove, builiding his confidence until he has the hard ball descending towards him. The hard baseball comes and he winces, again. Let's try grounders, I say. He travels back and forth. His throw imporving and then he throws to an invisible person next to me. And then the hard ball with the catching and the misses, we are in the abyss of misses, until he catches and the excitement in a yelp from me and a glow from him. I don't want him to give up either. For it will be hard. But seeing his little success makes him less scared to go. Go on that field again.

Part of giving up, part of feeling like you should be giving up is something I didn't think I knew- I knew personally. Maybe it was the fear of asking for help. Maybe it was the fear of failure. But now I ask for help. And I do take no for an answer. Sometimes. As I help others not give up- I realize the gift of it- is believing in someone- that they can- even if you believe in ways outside yourself and outside of them. I dream bigger then I should and maybe I want them to too. Dream of flying and major leagues and having 4 professions and a day of just sugar. I guess the never giving up allows the dreaming to happen. And me not giving up has always meant a yes eventually will happen. I do give up now when I have to. When I know I can't be in two places at once or need to throw money at a problem. But the never giving up stays with me along my side and I use it when I need to. When I need to get somewhere far, where I see someone who needs someone to believe- they can get there too. I am not done dreaming and being inside someone else's dreams allows me to keep dreaming too.

Leaving it Behind - Jackie Davis Martin

Roseann had left a number of things behind. She’d left her best earrings behind once, silver loops twisted with gold (neither real silver nor real gold, she suspected, but pretty all the same and matching everything, their being two metals), in a motel, forcing herself to drive up and down a highway the next morning before reporting to the high school where she taught, looking and looking for the motel that had that orientation of drive. She’d remembered pulling in sort of near an ice machine and walking three doors to the room assigned to her and the man, taking off the earrings and setting them down.

She kept her self-possession that morning as the tall guy with narrow eyes from the front office escorted her to the room she indicated—and there were her earrings, still on the side table. She thanked the man, shifted her shoulder bag and walked briskly in her heels, her skirt swaying, knowing he was watching and thinking any number of things, as she got in her car and drove to first period.

She’d also left behind a coffee maker, a real espresso machine, one of the first available, at Sam’s shore house. She guessed that it rightfully belonged to Sam, since he’d given the coffee machine to her, like an engagement ring, which he hadn’t. He’d given her lots of things, though, including—at least partially—a trip to Italy where they’d first had espresso, and the largesse of his vacation home at the shore, their relationship getting cozy to the point where she’d sewn checkered curtains for his windows and he’d purchased her a coffee machine that made foaming milk, if one could work the nozzle right, which she couldn’t seem to do. There turned out to be a number of things she couldn’t seem to do, like be a good mother and a good girlfriend at the same time, often leaving the kids behind to please Sam, and ultimately, not even being able to do that. So, after the last fiasco at the shore home, which left them both unsatisfied and a little angry and unhappy with each other, she hadn’t returned, hadn’t even bothered to reclaim the machine she’d dragged down there (he’d given it to her in her own house) so they could relive the old happiness, leaving it behind and feeling the loss of it, too, on top of the loss of Sam.

Then Roseann left her whole house behind. She took her car, with her new boyfriend, Bart, in it, and drove from New Jersey to California. There were evenings when they’d set up the tent in some National Park that she wondered what the hell she was doing, wondered about the house that she’d lived in for twenty-three years, the kids now gone from it anyway, but leaving no home to come home to. She’d snuggle next to Bart in a sleeping bag—or sometimes a motel room, when they’d spring for spending more cash—happy but unsettled, even in the San Francisco apartment which seemed temporary, like a motel, with its futon and cardboard tables, the kitchen set with three chairs they’d purchased at a garage sale. She felt as though she was involved in one of those scenes in front of the curtain while sets were being changed behind it to reveal ultimately the big story, the big picture, the real meaning of it all.

She did go back to collect the house. More or less. It was hers and when the renters left she considered moving back into it; instead, she sold it, leaving it behind for good.

Or so she thought. It wasn’t totally true. There was her daughter, who remained in the area, not very far from the house she’d grown up in, although in a different state, and Roseann visited every year, once at least, where they’d drive highways once familiar, once even past their old house, changed with new windows, new shrubs, down to a Jersey shore that had no associations, past motels of no particular orientation at all on their way to a museum or shopping center. When her daughter died, Roseann returned once more, packing up and giving away everything, carting back and sending what she wanted, knowing that no matter what she had in hand, this time she was truly leaving a way of life a life, behind.

Leaving it Behind - Melody Cryns

It didn’t occur to me when I eloped with Stephen with a ph in Lake Tahoe that I’d have to leave everyone and everything behind.

“Can’t believe you’re going to leave,” my friend Victri said, the two of us sitting in my bright green Vega wagon that kept breaking down – looking out on to the ocean.

Maureen coughed and passed a joint to us – it was the beginning of 1980 when we watched the sun set into the ocean – this is what I’d miss the most, I thought.

But it’s what I wanted, I thought, as I took a small toke of the joint. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker, but every now and again it was good. This just seemed like the right moment.

“Can’t believe it either.” I don’t think it sunk in for any of us – I’d known Maureen and Victri practically my whole life. I grew up in San Francisco and hadn’t lived anywhere else since I was five years old when we moved to San Francisco from Chicago – oh yeah, I had that short stint in Hayward with that boyfriend and my sister and I rented an apartment in Redwood City for a little while – but I’d never moved far away.

Now here I was leaving on a plane – early tomorrow morning.

“Of course we’ll have a going away party for you tonight,” Maureen said. “Mom’s pulling something together.” Maureen’s mom was like my surrogate Mom – my mother lived all the way up in Oregon and I was staying with Mary Doherty and her kids in San Francisco for a little while waiting to head for Germany – I had tried staying with my new mother-in-law and all of Stephen’s brothers and sisters in Hayward, but that was a huge disaster.

That night I sat in Mary Doherty’s living room – my Dad and my sister Jennifer had showed up –what a surprise! And, all of my close friends were there, Paula who traveled all the way from Sacramento to say good-bye, and Cathy, and all the Meehan family whom I’d grown up with and known since I was five years old – Mary Doherty, of course and Eileen, Maureen and Kathleen, her kids – and Victri, the daughter of my mom’s best friend since I was five – everyone was there crammed into Mary Doherty’s living room.

I’ll never forget that night as long as I live…Michael Meehan had showed up with a brown paper bag on his head – and he set it on fire and acted like everything was just normal while I freaked out and everyone laughed. Mike Meehan, believe it or not, went on to become a successful comedian, appearing on Comedy Central TV quite a few times. That didn’t surprise me. I’d known Mike Meehan since we were little kids and he was always cracking jokes and pulling pranks with his brothers Howard and Johnny and Chris. Katie and Dolores Meehan, and Meg Meegan along with their mother were all there too.

“Play your guitar!” Kathleen had said – she was around 10 years old then. I remembered babysitting for her sisters Eileen and Maureen before Mary D. had Kathleen and how that summer we all thought she was going to be a little boy.

So I strummed the chords and played a few songs – some Eagles songs I used to play and sing with Eileen and Maureen when they were younger, and then Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, one of our favorites.

As I began to strum the chords and sang, it all hit me – I was leaving behind my life here in San Francisco and heading for Germany the next morning to be with a husband I didn’t know too well except through letters.

I started the words, “All my bags are packed I’m ready to go, I’m standing here outside your door..” and then I choked up and began to cry – it was so embarrassing because the room was crammed with all of my friends and the people who were family to me – everyone there in that one room at Mary Doherty’s flat in San Francisco on 15th Avenue. I kept playing the chords, but I choked on the words, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.

Then I heard the singing – it was my Dad filling in the words I couldn’t sing, his voice a mid-tenor range, slow and true…”I hate to wake you up to say good-bye!!!”

Then others joined in, and before I knew it, everyone in the room sang Leavin’ on the Jet Plane while I played the song on my guitar completely unable to sing – and in the song I could feel so much love…

And I knew as I played the end of Leavin’ on the Jet Plane that things would never be the same again after this night in San Francisco, that I’d come back again of course, but this moment in time with all these people I loved and cared about in one room, would never happen again.

Everyone clapped and cheered when the song was over, and then we were all quiet for a moment.

They knew too…

Frenzy - Christa Fairfield

I watched my daughter dip and spin in the Pink tutu my mother sent as a late birthday gift.

“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica sang across the lawn.

“I’m watching, honey,” I said back.

Her bare feet were lost in the long blades. The twin braids she’d proudly wove the night before slapped her shoulders and checks.

“Can you see, El?” I asked of the pale blue sky. My palms stretched across my knees.

“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica called as she tipped onto her right toe, touched the ground with the tips of her right hand and attempted to turn. “I’m like a ballerina.” She sang out before falling over on her left knee.

“Try again.” I encouraged.

“El, can you help her?” I asked of the sky. “Can you extend yourself to us? Hold our daughter up so she doesn’t fall?” I wiped the emotion from my eyes and looked across the lawn. Veronica was singing I’m a little tea pot while she twisted, tipped and spun.

“I can’t keep her safe alone.” I said into the void.

Frenzy - Maria Robinson

You turned sixty and had no one living to look up. Had you really scaled the mountain, reached the top of a male profession only to be told to retreat to quiet summers on your lake front porch in Michigan. During sleepless nights as you pulled at what little hair you had bleached Hollywood spun gold, you knew you had to maneuver into a way to get out. Out of the feckless days which left you breathless, out of the hours of waiting for the perfect life script to call you for casting, out of the tedium of people thinking you were still on the ladder up and in their way, while in reality, you were floating on air.

Stillness - Jennifer Baljko

Oriol slammed the door behind him, trudged down the flight of stairs, and dragged his feet down the street. When he got to the train station, he sat on a bench and stared up at the board announcing arriving and departing trains. He lingered in absolute stillness, only his eyes darting about, catching glimpse of people walking by. He wondered where they were going. He wished them a safe trip, a safe return. Oriol couldn’t really ever make himself look at train tracks again, not after the accident. But, he could never, shake off the jolt he got from the bustle of train stations. It was a childhood wonder he carried with him, and didn’t want to fade away.