Essays

I was in a rut – a big ol’ nasty rut with work, feeling trapped by the mundane day-to-day. That’s when I got the call from my dear friend Leah.

Making decisions about what to get rid of is one of the many burdens aging bestows on those fortunate enough to last. I’ve recently been trying to make them myself.

I was sitting at the bar of a subpar pub. On the stool next to me sat a glittering heap of rouge and jewels which proved to be a woman of advanced years. She couldn’t’ve been a duchess, not at O’Finnegan’s. But there was something distinctly aristocratic about the way she fingered her pearls.

On Christmas Eve, I stand at the sink, pry open baseball navels, the perfect world of orange: heady zest to the nose, the bitter pith, my thumbs’ push, push to separate flesh from thick rind, not unlike pushing from the old year to the new, birthing the long hidden into daylight.

It’s hard to believe the whole of the world isn’t simply the sum of all the little worlds that look exactly like your own.

Though our house had no special distinction, she had chosen our porch for the delivery, heaving across the dusty tiles, trusting us.