volume 14 number 2
by Marc Berman
It seems like I’m always closing my book, kissing you good night, falling asleep.
I try to keep busy during the days, meet friends for lunch, figure out what’s for dinner.
Our short, fatigued evenings. Some TV, checking up on the children’s social media postings, a kiss, good night again.
I’m thinking more about that 1962 Corvair convertible I promised myself. But the sun is hot today, my skin susceptible to damage or worse.
When we run out of topics to discuss, we entertain the possibility of a dog.
But dawn in January, those little blue plastic bags… Well, maybe we’ll put it on hold until one of us dies.
Meanwhile, those friends seem less and less able. They threaten to visit their children permanently. We envy that this could be in the cards at all.
Some have grandchildren. Yet there is no imperative to replicate you or me, what we’ve meant to our children these last thirty years.
Suddenly, it’s sugar season again. Then the peonies, the frogs stuck in our small stone pond.
And it seems like successive weeks I’m opening and closing the lakehouse again.
It’s Wednesday. Then it’s Wednesday. The Sunday papers pile up. On Monday I would gather my strength and go back to work. On Monday I’d go to work.