Member-only story
Prose & Poetry
Believe the Story That Works for You
An ordinary day offers a blank canvas to change the world.
Moving cross country to a place where I know no one, unknown instincts kicked in to save lives.
Not an overstatement.
Four-year old girl climbed onto the side of a shopping cart, bored with her mother’s dithering over the wall of flavored, sparkling waters.
Baby sister delighted in big sister’s entry.
Cart tipped over.
I caught the cart a millisecond before it hit the tile floor.
Righting it, I assured the mother that kids had a way of living past the worst things.
Yup, a polite New England lie draped over the truth that not every child lives to be thirty, plodding through Tuesday obligations.
It takes both hands for me to count the children I have known who never made it to thirty — wondrous, gifted sons and daughters who veered badly in their moments of choice.
Bad things happen.
To good people.
To two happy little girls chortling in a shopping cart blocking the impatient New England type wondering if she can just grab what she wants with apologetic, false smile.
