Thirty-five is the rhythm of everyday life. It’s seeing someone and thinking, I knew you well once. It’s knowing where you are happiest—but how to cope when you can’t be there. Thirty-five is realizing you’ve lived twice as long as the counselors caring for your kids at camp. It’s getting dizzy on the roller coasters …
I’ll spend much of this summer at my alma mater overnight camp with my three sons. I’ll work in the front office while the boys enjoy programming designed for staff kids. Each day, we’ll step outside to the dewy chill of early morning air. Come nightfall, we’ll huddle under fleece blankets in a modest bunk–two rooms …
The garage door lifted against the night. 4am may be morning, but all pitch black and silence, you wouldn’t know it. The car beep startled me awake as I slid into the driver seat, coffee clutched, and set out for Pittsburgh. Minutes before, I’d fingered the wisps of hair that fell across my baby’s forehead. …
It was a dingy corner of a gym at a local community center during a simple 6th birthday party. I was chasing down the two-year-old, an interloper on the kindergartner’s birthday circuit, amidst hardened gum stains and up and down rubber-lined steps set against linoleum flooring. The building was dated—40s? 60s?—and I drank in that …
Boxes line the study walls, still packed. Stoic smiles traded in school hallways, in passing. I rush home to be enveloped in a quiet house that’s not mine. I let no one in. It feels, it is, temporary. A walk on wet sand without a trace. A swim through water without a wake. But I don’t …
Dina L. Relles 