Super Short Stories

Is There a Word for This?

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“How do you feel about your daughter(s) doing that?” people ask with furrowed brows. Sarah, 25, climbs cliffs. Sophia, also 25, is training to row a 4-woman boat from San Francisco to Waikiki.

As toddlers, buckling into booster seats, they always checked their safety gear. Today, they still do. As little girls we told them, “You are strong and capable.” Today, they still are.

How do I feel? I need a word… that means terrified, awestruck, helpless, and proud. I haven’t found it. Maybe “mom” should be an adjective — that anyone can use — as in, “I’m feeling very mom today.”

Sarah, the author's daughter, on belay on a granite slab
Photo credit: Ankoni Lowman
Sophia, the author's daughter, rowing an open-ocean boat.
Photo credit: Kristin Burtch, Instagram

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Love After HIV

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“My mother says your husband will probably leave you now,” my friend said, two weeks after I told her I’d tested HIV-positive. “Your mother doesn’t know him, or me, or even what real love looks like, apparently,” I replied.

My husband and I had skipped the traditional marriage vows, but that conversation showed me their value: “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” Thirty-one years later, we’re still married, he’s still HIV-negative, and our 25-year old twin daughters (also HIV-negative) are thriving. Sometimes, people’s comments say more about them than they do about you.

P.S. Thanks to The New York Times for publishing this piece in Tiny Love Stories.

You Are Safe Now

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At dawn, I took my friend on her 4th nature walk… ever.

“Nature scares me. I don’t know why.”

Beyond parched hills and a pier, grey sky melted into grey bay. In a eucalyptus grove, we sat to write List Poems. I filled six pages; she started one.

“I got overwhelmed by all the switches on the ground… Mom made me cut my own.”

I winced. “What else could we call them? Walking sticks? Doggy chews? Lincoln Logs?”

She sighed. “I remember Lincoln Logs.”

I snapped a branch into twigs, forming letters on the picnic table:

Y-O-U
A-R-E
S-A-F-E
N-O-W

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Leap of Faith

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We are alone on the quiet mountain where I stand helplessly watching my daughter Sophia (25). When she starts running towards the cliff, her boyfriend’s back is turned, but a split second later he has spun around and is running after her. Now he is only inches behind. She leaps into the void, and he leaps after her.

The 30 lines connecting their tandem harness to the red nylon arch of his paraglider hold strong, and they soar like an eagle, back and forth across the Owens Valley, touching down safely on the valley floor ten minutes later, grinning and breathless. 

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A Leap of Faith

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Why Was This One A Butterfly?

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At the memorial, the baby’s older sisters wept and clutched one another while her parents sat and stared, stoic and inconsolable, the mother fingering her rosary.

“When a baby dies, some of us might feel angry with God,” the priest said. “We might ask, ‘Why did You allow this to happen?’ Even I don’t know why. God gives us redwood trees that live for hundreds of years, but God also gives us butterflies that only live a few days. Perhaps it’s not our job to know. Perhaps ours is just to cherish them both as miracles while they’re here.”

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