{by Kaleigh Somers}

We’re graduating and the future is 34 pushpins pressed into a map of the United States.

“Probability says California,” My roommate, Brooke, told me as she cupped her forearms around a cluster of pins.

I nodded, trying to imagine her in California, me in New York City, our other roommate in Washington, D.C. It was too much to think about, all of us spread thin across a country where the only comfort we had was loneliness. We’d take comfort in knowing that, ironically, we couldn’t possibly be sure anything monumental would happen in the next five years.

It’s funny how one home transitions into another. Looking back, it’s seamless. But when you’re at the edge of each cliff and you’re ready to jump, it’s like the first time you realize the world is in constant motion. For three years and eight months, it’s pushed to the back of your mind.

Then you feel it rising up from the pit of your stomach like a sudden sickness that washes over you, forcing you to stop and sit down. To regain a sense of balance and stability. To find yourself on that map of pushpins.

Where will I be in the future?

I wonder.

“You’ll live on the lake,” I told Brooke. “I can picture it.”

…

Forestation rises up on three sides; a vast expanse of murky water closes off the loop. Children laugh in the background as she stretches out on the shoreline, digging the tips of her toes into the grass and dirt. She stops reading her book to crane her neck, motioning for her daughter to come to where she’s sitting.

“Do you want to go for a swim?” she asks the child.

The girl, whose hair is as white-blonde as Brooke’s, nods vehemently and starts tugging her t-shirt over her head.

She reaches the edge of the water, lifts up one foot, and frowns.

“What’s wrong?” Brooke asks.

{By Jordana from Flour Child}

Last night, it rained.

It sounded like magic and love and dreaming and soup and kittens. I put on my fluffiest sweatshirt and cuddled up in bed and watched super classy shows like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom 2. Keepin’ things elegant, you know. I was joyous; absolutely blissful. Until, without any warning, some scary evil malicious malevolent forceful force came over me and I was craving chocolate frosting something fierce.

No amount of Gossip Girl was going to help me and I knew it, so I gave in. But chocolate frosting? Really? I couldn’t just eat chocolate frosting off of a spoon, that’s so unsophisticated. Thankfully, the Heavens have blessed us with chocolate mousse. Espresso chocolate mousse. It’s acceptable the eat that off of a spoon, let me tell you. Basically, when the Queen of England and every Manhattan socialite ever get together for dessert, they eat this. So classy I can’t even handle it!

{By Michelle Palmer of One Roof Africa}

“Mama will you lay with me?”

I sigh. Why is this glaring screen more enticing to me than her seven-year-old nighttime snuggles?

“In a minute,” I reply, thinking she might just go fall asleep before I get to her. More than “a minute” passes and then, from the bedroom, “Mama?”

I relent. Walk down the dark hall into her even darker room. Grumble as I trip over the toys left out and the Sit-n-Spin rumbles loud under my feet. Will this house ever be mess-free?!

She’s tucked in under her t-shirt quilt, a Christmas gift I had made for each of us before our move to Uganda. I cuddle her close, smell her hair, rub my fingers down her arms, think of how big she is growing and she really should have had a shower before bed and she giggles, “Mama, you’re taking up a lot of room.” In my snuggling I inadvertently took over her pillow and now she’s just lying on a corner. I scooch over a bit.

She asks for a song. “But not a catchy one–I don’t want to be singing it all night.” I begin to sing “Stay Awake”, but she stops me. “No, no, not that one! Less catchy!” Aggravated, I sing “Amazing Grace,” with all the verses. She calls Benny to her side; he lies down and lays his head across her tummy.

{By Jesse Wright of Jesse Wright Photo}

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“Psycho” by Jesse Wright from Jesse Wright Photo | @jessewright | Facebook
shared via Posterous

{by Craig Lesley, Bad Chemicals}

I’m zoned out most of the time. The world rifles by and I shuffle and daydream and stare at my shoes and don’t notice much of anything as weeks speed past.

But every so often I catch a sliver, the words “Forgive Me” spray painted on an overpass, the color of my eyes reflected in a shop window, my wife Sally making peanut butter cookies with our kids in the kitchen.

A few nights ago, rooting around for something to read on my night stand, I unearthed a picture, under a pile of magazines and books, taken last autumn at the neonatal intensive care unit. The whole family is in the photograph—Sally, our four-year-old, our two-week-old, and me. I’m holding the infant, who’s wrinkled and weighs barely three pounds. It looks like we’re all smiling, even the baby somehow.

The picture sent my head back, to those grey days, to the fluorescent lights in the sterile hospital, to that tiny boy with the tubes and the wires and the sensors.

That was a tough time. Sally had lost all that blood and our baby was teetering and the leaves were falling and every day I had to walk past the nursery with the plump babies and their proud relatives staring through the glass. Most days, I wanted to growl at those happy gawkers at the nursery window. I wanted to punch their grinning mouths.

But looking at that picture the other night, I realized the anger and worry had dripped away and what remained of those grey days was longing. I visited the newborn every afternoon in the hospital, and I told him about his brother and the pets at home as he laid in the incubator. I mentioned that the nice lady who kept stopping by and touching his feet was his mother. “You’ll like her,” I assured him. “She’s the one who knows what’s going on.”

I found myself missing those quiet afternoons together and the mystery of that wrinkled baby who I needed so desperately to grow big like the newborns in the nursery.

I drove the four-year-old to preschool that fall, and we discussed big trucks and soccer and hard rock as we cruised in the station wagon.

“Dad, do monster trucks like Metallica?” he asked one cold morning.

“Son,” I explained. “Monster trucks adore Metallica.”

I found myself missing those talks, too, as I gazed at that picture.

Yesterday, almost 10 months after the baby crashed into the world 10 weeks early, he crawled for the first time, grunting and stretching out and inching across the playroom to gum a toy. I called Sally in, and as she watched him crawl, she cheered.

Then she looked at me. “And so it begins,” she muttered, almost ominously.

Monday, the four-year-old, who is now the five-year-old, started kindergarten. He lugged his oversized Superman backpack down the stairs and all the way to his class without any help. “I’ve got it, Dad,” he told me.

Tuesday, in the school parking lot, he asked, “Dad, can I not hold your hand? I’ll be very careful.”

Today, he walked to class by himself. I stood at the school entrance as he rolled his backpack down the hallway, shorter and thinner than the other children bobbing along. A few steps in, the boy turned around and waved. Then he continued straight and confidently away.

I wish I could do that. I wish I could just walk away like my kindergartener did. But that’s not me. That’s not how I’m put together.

These boys are growing up, and they need to. They need to crawl. They need to go to school. They need to travel to sunny cities. They need to fall hard for pretty girls.

And I need to let them walk down those hallways and drive away in those cars, but I know I can’t completely. Some part of me will linger there, puttering along in the station wagon with the bad heavy metal cranked up, watching the five-year-old weave his way to class, rocking the infant in the hospital on those grey days last fall.

And that part of me will know that sadness is also a gift.