Short stories

My toddler boy turns away from me and I notice that his blue and white pants have a big pink stain on the tushie. His sisters have been feeding him strawberries in the car again, I see, and he's been not finishing them, and squirreling them, and sitting on them.

He turns back to me and hands me his jacket. I just notice, for the first time, that this sturdy jean jacket he's been wearing for a month, the hand-me-down from his sisters, is not so gender-neutral as I thought. The circular brass buttons are debossed with shiny hearts.

I sit at a red light and watched a shaggy-haired college kid play banjo in a folding aluminum chair on his front porch. He bobs his head

I wait all day for the moment I'll have a chance to write an encouraging note to a friend whose daughter is about to have tubes put in her ears, and for the moment when I can catch up on the crazy cast of characters entering another friend's day.

I pick up my contact lenses and grab a tuna melt in the food court and pay no attention to the instrumental jazz on the loudspeakers until a solitary patron stands up amongst the crowded chairs to dance the Electric Slide.

I get a call from the daycare, and go downstairs to find my eldest's face shiny white with fever. It's suddenly time to go home. Suddenly there are no other stories.