Leaving Home: Short Pieces Read Online Free Page A

keep. “I’ll call,” Sarah said, and Abe nodded. “Be well,” he answered.

    She was going to stay with her mother – something that, in all the years of their marriage, Abe never would have imagined coming to pass; and yet he considered this a positive sign. If Sarah was choosing Felicity, in spite of their rocky relationship, maybe there was hope for all children to return to their parents, regardless of how impossible the journey seemed to be.

    He had to pull a chair over to the window, because he was no longer tall enough to see over its sill. He stood on the cushion and watched her put her suitcase into the car. She looked enormous to him, a giantess – and he considered that this is what motherhood does to a woman: make her larger than life. He waited until he could not see her car anymore, and then he climbed down from the chair.

    He could not work anymore; he was too short to reach the counter. He could not drive anywhere, the pedals were too far from his feet. There was nothing for Abe to do, so he wandered through the house, even emptier than it was. He found himself, of course, in his daughter’s room. Here, he spent hours: drawing with her art kit; playing with her pretend food and cash register; sifting through the drawers of her clothing and playing a game with himself: can you remember the last time she wore this? He put on a Radio Disney CD and forced himself to listen to the whole of it. He lined up her stuffed animals, like witnesses.

    Then he crawled into her dollhouse, one he’d built for her last Christmas. He closed the door behind himself. He glanced around at the carefully pasted wallpaper, the rich red velvet loveseat; the kitchen sink. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where he could stare out the window to his heart’s content. The view, it was perfect.

An Open Letter to My Oldest Son, As He Leaves for College

    You were in such a hurry to arrive. There I was, in the middle of a class IV hurricane a month before my due date, packing a bag for the hospital between contractions, as gusts of rain rattled the house. There was your father, videotaping through the windshield as he drove; the eerie bank of tollbooths on the highway unmanned and free for all. And then, suddenly, there you were: long and skinny and undercooked, still missing your eyelashes and fingernails. In all my life, I had never seen anything as remarkable as your life. As the doctors and nurses wandered the halls of the hospital, quarantined by the storm; as reporters on the grainy television overhead talked about waves breaking over the sea wall and coastal flooding; I held you tight. You , I thought, already have a story to tell the world.

    You were in such a hurry to arrive, and now, eighteen years later, I’m having a hard time letting you go. I know that the whole point of parenting is getting your child to the point where he can forge his own path. I know that a hatchling who is six feet tall and sports size twelve shoes is not really a hatchling anymore. And I know that the preparations for this moment have been ongoing – from packing up your clothes to selecting the desk lamp for your dorm room, from writing out directions to help you do your own laundry to opening up a bank account in your name – all these tiny hallmarks that let a stranger see, at close range, you are no longer a child but an adult. Yet now that we’re actually in the moment – driving to the school that will serve as a bridge to your future – I feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten. Did I tell you that you have to change the bag inside the vacuum every now and then? Do you have any idea how to sew on a button?

    I have equipped you with extra long sheets and a television set and a credit card with your name emblazoned across the bottom. Boxes are piled high in the back of the car, full of your softest tees and your broken-in jeans, your favorite books and your iPod speakers, everything you assume you will need to recreate