Author: Kathryn Lynard Soper

read Part I; Part II; Part III IV. Stairway to Heaven We are entwined in bed when the phone rings. We let the machine answer, annoyed by the interruption but determined not to lose focus. Seconds later the phone rings again. Reed mutters something, and I silently curse whoever is lame enough to call repeatedly at 10:30 pm. When it immediately rings again, Reed lunges out of bed, grabs the phone from the computer desk and barks a hello. I brace myself on behalf of the caller, probably one of the kids’ clueless friends, who’s about to get an earful. But Reed doesn’t say much. All I hear is “yes” and “okay” and “thank you” in a tone of voice I can’t identify; I can see the outline of his upper body in the window’s faint backlighting but I can’t see his face. After half a minute he hangs up the phone and turns on the light. “Get dressed,” he tells me. 

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read Part I; Part II III. Day of the Dead When I come inside from lighting the jack-o-lanterns, the boys are waiting for me. “When are we going to go?” Sam asks from behind the white sheet of his ghost costume. “Yeah, let’s go,” says pirate Matt, swinging his pumpkin-shaped candy bag. He is eight and Sam is six. None of our older four kids are willing to be seen trick-or-treating with their parents. Matt and Sam would actually be pleased to have both of us tag along, but taking a long stroller ride in the dark is not our preschooler’s idea of a good time, so one of us will stay home with him while the other walks the neighborhood. I know Reed will refuse to take the boys more than a few blocks, so because I am I good mother, I volunteer. And because I am a bad mother, I bring along my iPod, placed strategically in my jacket pocket so that I can easily hit pause if the kids stop thinking about candy long enough to talk to me.

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read Part I  II. Blue Boy The kids and I are decorating Christmas gingerbread men when the phone rings. I sigh, knowing that even a few minutes’ interruption could spell disaster in a kitchen full of rowdy kids wielding tubes of frosting. I head toward the phone, snatching the sprinkles away from twelve-year-old Ben, who’s sprinkling them straight into his mouth. My mother’s name shows on the caller ID; I pick up to tell her we’re in the middle of a mess and I’ll call her back. “I need you for just a minute,” she says, and her numb voice stops me short. When I ask her what’s wrong, she clears her throat and says, “I have some bad news about your brother.”

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An essay posted in four parts. Originally published in Irreantum as an entry for the 2011 Charlotte and Eugene England Personal Essay Contest. The deadline for the 2012 contest is May 31.  I. Descent It’s an hour or so from sunset when we pile into the jeep – me and my roommate Stacey, her friend Dave, his friend Tim, and a couple whose names I can’t remember, who Stacey and I squeeze next to in the back seat. It’s the beginning of my sophomore year at BYU, early September, 1990—a few weeks since I met Reed, the man who becomes my husband eighteen months later. I’d rather be with him on this Friday night and I regret promising Stacey that I’d come along for a caving trip west of Utah Lake. Tim starts the jeep and I search in vain for a seat belt. The warm air pushes against my cheeks as we pull onto I-15 south and Tim accelerates to freeway speed. He pops in a cassette tape and Led Zeppelin blasts from the stereo speaker, reminding me of humid East coast nights after high school graduation. I first heard the music years ago, vibrating through my brother’s bedroom door; I stole his cassette tapes and listened to them lying on my bed, using a battered Walkman with foamy earphones. The tapes came with me to Provo, where I sat under a tree next to the freshman dorms with…

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The door is the first thing I notice: an automatic sliding door with three wide panels of glass.  When I step on the sensor mat, the third panel slides back behind the second and the second slides back behind the first, leaving a doorway at least ten feet across. It takes me a minute to remember where else I’ve seen a door like this: the children’s hospital. The ER, to be exact. Not the main entrance, but the one in the ambulance zone, where EMTs rolled gurneys bearing little bodies into the fluorescent light of the trauma center. But this building isn’t a hospital. It’s a school.

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Fourth and last in a series of essays about female identity. Previous posts explored this theme in the contexts of air, water, and earth. It was snowing when I drove to the hospital, and it wouldn’t be daylight for another hour at least. The only person in the lobby was the woman at the information desk. She directed me to the laboratory down the hall, where I handed over my paperwork and sat down in the empty waiting room. On the wall-mounted TV, a news reporter announced that an escaped convict had been captured. He’d broken out of federal prison to visit his terminally ill mother. The tech called my name and motioned me to the blood-draw chair. She asked what procedure would be having that morning. I looked over my shoulder; the waiting room was still empty. “Tubal ligation,” I said.

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(Part 3 of 4. Read the first parts here and here.) Once a year, right before our Christmas dinner, I practice the fine art of pomegranate seeding. If I’d let them my kids would eat pomegranates every day, but they’re expensive. And the juice stains. This year we have two of the fruits, spherical with thick skins of dull red. I choose one and use a serrated knife to saw through its center. The fruit falls in halves on the cutting board, revealing plump clusters of seeds separated by paper-thin pith. Juice seeps from the wound and runs down the edge of the knife. I’m glad to be alone in the kitchen—last time, my overzealous helpers splattered the redness like blood at a crime scene.

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(Part 2 of 4. Read the first part here). Between the Washington Beltway and the Delaware coast lay 150 miles of waiting. Waiting, and watching, and sweating with boredom as my grandmother’s Oldsmobile slowly cruised Route 50. We took this road every summer, me and my brother and our Yia Yia Christine, leaving behind the Maryland suburbs for the Lynard vacation spot on Rehoboth Beach.

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(part 1 of 4) A strange autumn. The gold harvest sky, usually so calm and calming, is full of unrest. Nervous pigeons cluster near the freeway overpass. Above them circle the gulls, those inland outlanders who should be pulling fish from the sea. Nameless small dark birds coalesce into rolling, chattering clouds before dropping to roost on rooftops and treetops and utility wires.

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