It’d been almost a year since it happened and I was still on high alert with a guard that never quite went down. It was my first day at a new job and though I’d already done a thorough sweep of the office when I’d arrived, my hypervigilance kept me constantly scanning for any changes. Halfway through the day, a guy on the other side of the room stood up — a minor moment that registered as a major energetic shift because I knew intuitively he was headed my way. With my systems all fired up, I clocked the important details: taller than me, definitely over 25 but probably under 30, floppy brown hair, green eyes, a wide boyish grin and very cute, which was of course rendered moot by the most important detail about him — his maleness. …
I believe every family has its own sort of mythology — a collection of shared stories about what came before, common touchpoints of what was and what is, ideas about what is normal and what is not — and growing up in mine, ours included the character of Dennis. He was lumped in there with other bits of common knowledge (my father was a city kid; my mother was a country girl!) and known most simply for being the guy who’d been in love with my mom since high school. Dennis was someone we laughed about, just some dopey boy who’d had mooneyes for my mother and had regularly embarrassed himself trying to win her heart. …
Lately, it’s seemed like the whole world is in various states of chaos and upheaval. Beneath the shooting and hate crimes and terrorist attacks lies an overall uneasiness we all feel, and the constant barrage of trauma and tragedies can wear down even the most optimistic of souls.
