julio

His name is Julio and he is the most adorable four-year-old you can imagine. His eyes are dark and alternately mischievous and mysterious. Sometimes you know exactly what he’s thinking; other times, good luck. His hair is dark, too, and curly and thick. It smells of a child’s sweat and his sweetness, too. When he talks, which he does when he’s excited, his words are light and a bit lispy, though not so much that he’ll ever be branded, should he live to be old enough to attend school, which he won’t, because he’s riding on his mother’s lap, as she and his father drive to the grocery store. The accident that will take place in a minute will occur in a moment’s split-second, the kind of collision that would be termed a fender-bender, in other circumstances. Not today, though. Forty-five seconds from this exact moment, Emile Gonzalez, 82, who lives in a retirement home and attends adult day care five days a week, will make a blind turn and strike the front right bumper of the car driven by Julio’s father. If Julio were riding in the back seat, in a car seat, wearing a seat belt, he wouldn’t even feel the impact. Because he is unstrapped on his mother’s lap, he will end up in a coma. He will be dead in two days. The cost of the auto repairs to both cars will total $2500. A mere pittance, given the loss.

esther's story

FRIDAY, Sept. 22: I took my kids outside for class, today -- it was cool and breezy with high, white, puffy clouds -- for an exercise in seeing and listening. I asked them to spend seven minutes in solitude, somewhere near the academic building just being quiet and observing and writing what they saw and heard. It wasn’t the first time I’ve done this with my classes. But, again, I was completely heartened by the results. It’s funny, or not, I suppose, that kids, today, don’t spend much quiet time, much time thinking or looking. They’re bombarded with all kinds of noise and captivated – or distracted – by all kinds of images. But when you slow them down, they do hear and see. Kitty Anderson saw dew drops sliding off leaves and, as she wrote, “crashing silently” to the ground. Pete Eggleston saw clouds move, or as he wrote, “slip slowly across the bluest sky I’ve ever seen.” Hiroshi Sumo, an international student from Japan, wrote about the “peace of a morning dotted with blood red flowers.” I saw a group of young people looking hard to see the world in which they live. The real world. It made me smile.

dreaming

In the dream she was married and said to him, "If I were to kiss another man, it would be you," and when they sat for dinner, she sat to his right, away from her husband, and even though she sat comfortably erect, he could feel her leaning toward him. Nothing more happened, at all, but that was enough.

dora

Her name is Dora and she’s the librarian at the school and she’s been that for almost 15 years, now. Before that, she was married, a mother and a lot of other things that now seem distant and almost imaginary. That was before the divorce and before Jim, their boy, died in Iraq. It’s been three years since all of that and the only reason she survived was the books. Not that she read them, for she wasn’t much of a reader. It was that she tended them. She cared for them They gave her something to do. Her doing that something gave her life some order. It may sound silly or simple or both, but it’s true. She used to laugh at herself: Mrs. Dewey Decimal. Today, just a few minutes ago, the principle told her that they were going to shut down the library. Not enough money to keep it going in these hard times. The kids would use the library across the street, in the high school. They would find something else for her, she was assured. But she knew they wouldn’t. Or was it: they couldn't.

stephen

He sees his father every other week, when his foster mother sets up the visit. They are not allowed to meet alone. It is one of the rules. The father’s name is Victor. The boy’s is Stephen. Stephen is 13. He is bright and has a ready smile. In three weeks, he will begin attending middle school, the breeding ground for the local gangs. He will be recruited and he will have difficulty refusing. It is the way things are, down here. His foster mother is good. She cares for him; she loves him. But the draw to his kind, or those he thinks to be his kind, will be far too strong. His father will like this development. His father will say it is what he did, before he got hooked on crack and cheap liquor. His father will show his son the gangbanger tattoo on his left biceps. Pretty soon, as soon as the law allows, the father will be inviting Stephen to live with him, again, and Stephen will agree and weeks later Stephen’s ready smile will be only a memory and he will be dead before he is 19. It is the way things are, down here.

missing

She asked if I would miss
The snow and
I
said “No,” thinking that
what I might
miss,
if anything,
would be the warmth of the
hearth, the brittleness of
the early
morning,
the need for the extra
comforter at midnight.
The idea
of
it
all,
mostly
as I walk along the
windswept beach
in December.

daily

They congregate at the corner of Main and Elm every morning, reaching a top of about 50 or so right around eight-thirty, when the traffic is heaviest and the contractors and landscapers head off to the nearby mansions and almost manses. Some sit and smoke. Some stand and drink coffee. Some talk. Others just watch, as the other life of Fairfield County bypasses them, in a hurry – investors on the way to invest; mothers taking children to childcare; high school students driving their BMWs and Mercedes and Mini-Coopers to class. The dichotomy seems stark to some who see it, the affluence and desperation in such close proximity. Others just shrug it off. The men waiting for work, hoping for a payday, simply continue to sit, smoke, stand, drink coffee.