We've been running a column series to get more personal with our readers. We are now into our seventh year!
This month, we are writing short fiction stories for your entertainment and enjoyment. We used to write short stories in the past at our personal blogs and decided to get back into doing that again.
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Melissa Amster:I am semi-phoning it in this month. It's been a busy and hectic few weeks between graduation, family visits, work, a broken dishwasher, and some other things going on. Last month, I participated in a short-story challenge (1000 words or less), where we'd get a prompt every week. This is my favorite of the stories I wrote for the challenge and I wanted to share it here. The prompt was: “I can’t go out there, there’s pollen.” Enjoy!
“Astrid! Time to get your shoes on. We’re leaving for school in five minutes.” I shout up the stairs in hopes of getting my strong-willed four-year-old out the door on time today.
“I can’t go out there, there’s pollen,” Astrid says from the top of the stairs.
“It’s 30 degrees out in January. There’s no pollen.”
“Mommy. There is pollen outside. Can I stay home today?”
“Astrid, we’re not doing this again. You ask me this every day and the answer is always no. We only stay home if you’re sick or if there’s a snowstorm.”
“But Mom-meeee. I want to stay home! I don’t like pollen.”
“Do you even know what pollen is?”
Astrid stares at the ceiling while thinking it over, clearly adding to her stalling tactics. “No. But Damian said it’s really bad and causes you to sneeze all the time.”
“Pollen comes out in the spring, so you have nothing to worry about. Now get your shoes on so we can go to school. If you’re late, then Mommy will be late for work again. And Mommy will be sad if that happens because she’ll get in trouble.”
Astrid stands firm at the top of the stairs. “No,” she stubbornly says while crossing her arms.
“Come on, Astrid. This isn’t funny anymore. Yesterday it was bees, which don’t come out until spring either. The day before it was Christmas, which already happened a few weeks ago. We need to leave in two minutes.”
Astrid starts taking off the clothes that took her forever to pick out and put on in the first place.
“Astrid! I am giving you to the count of three to put your clothes back on and get your shoes on. If you don’t listen to me, then no Bluey after school! One….two…”
“No fair! I want Bluey!” Astrid plunks herself down on the top step and stomps on the one below.
I am about ready to pull out my hair. “Astrid,” I say as calmly as possible, “you can watch Bluey if you listen to me and get ready for school like I’ve asked you to five times already today.”
“Hmmmph!” Astrid runs back into her room and slams the door shut.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this kid. In the meantime, I need to have someone cover for me at work this morning because I know I won’t make it in on time again and I’m supposed to set up the morning meeting. I don’t know what I did to my mom when I was Astrid’s age, but clearly I’m experiencing some sort of karmic retribution. I groan when I hear Astrid scream-singing the Bluey theme song at the top of her lungs. I run upstairs and knock on her door.
“Astrid Leigh Mitchell, get out here right now! We have to leave.” The room goes silent. “Astrid?!? What are you doing?” The silence unnerves me and I turn the knob of the door, but it won’t open. Judging from past experience, she put her toy chest in front of it again. At this rate, I might as well call us both in sick today as we’re never getting out of the house. I think of everything I am not going to get done today and try to figure out who can cover even more for me. Then I hear “Mommy?”
“Yes, Astrid.”
“I had an accident again.”
I take a deep breath before speaking again. “Okay, sweetie. Can you open the door so I can help you get cleaned up?” I hear some shuffling and then the door opens up a crack.
“Mommy, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, but we really do need to hurry up. If you can help by picking out some new pants, it will make Mommy really happy. Can you do that?”
Astrid goes to her pants drawer and pulls out the first pair she sees. Gray sweatpants with ballet slippers. They totally don’t match her yellow Bluey shirt, but I’ll take what I can get.
After I help her clean up, I hand her the pants to put on.
She throws them back at me, hitting me in the face. “I don’t like these pants. They’re ugly!”
I count to ten in my head so I don’t scream. “But you picked them out, sweetie.”
“Mom-meeeee! I don’t like these pants. I want new pants! Let’s go to Target.”
“You have plenty of pants, Astrid. Tell you what. If you put these pants on and get your shoes on right now, we will go to Target after school and get you a treat.”
“Really?!?” Astrid’s whole face lights up.
“Yes, but you need to do it in one minute. Starting….now!”
I breathe a sigh of relief as Astrid puts her pants on, backwards no less, and races down the stairs to get her shoes on. Finally! Who cares if they’re on the wrong feet?
“Mommy, did I win?”
“Yes. Let’s get your bag and go to the car.”
Astrid suddenly comes to a stop in the front hallway. “But Mommy, I didn’t have breakfast.”
I toss a banana and a small container of Cheerios into Astrid’s backpack. “You can eat in the car.”
“But you always say I can’t eat in the car.” Astrid smugly grins at me, thinking she’s won this round.
“I’ll get a mini-vacuum when we go to Target. Just get in the car.”
Astrid seems satisfied by that and we’re on our way, after I bundle her in her Bluey coat with her Bluey hat and Bluey scarf. Bluey mittens too, of course. And then snow starts coming down and an alert comes onto my phone saying all schools and daycares are closing to prepare for a snow emergency.
Great. Just great. As I check the phone for updates about work, I hear Astrid chanting “Snow day, snow day, time for everyone to play!”
It’s going to be a long day.
Sara Steven:
Hub-and-Spoke
The first time I traveled alone was the summer of ‘89, when I flew out on an early morning Alaskan airline flight to see my favorite aunt in California. I’d never been on an airplane before, let alone left my Oregonian suburbs behind to achieve parental freedom, yet there I was, my grandmother chaperoning the drive to the Portland airport, green road signs along Interstate 5 lit up with reflective tape in the darkness. Her Crown Victoria passed large trucks carrying cows and pigs, with trailers towing horses through a thin sheen of rain in the early morning hours.
I was due to meet my aunt Vicky in the San Francisco terminal. We’d been pen pals for years; the glamorous model from Walnut Creek, California, and the soon-to-be sixth grader at Brush College Elementary School, in Salem, Oregon. I could already see the Maybelline eyeshadow rimming her heavy eyelids, with frosty pink lip gloss brimming with anticipation, like it always did when she’d visit during major holidays. But this felt different. A family visit was nothing compared to time spent away from prying mothers and fathers. Or grandmothers, even.
This felt grown up.
It felt even more grown up when my grandmother pulled into a dimly lit tunnel mazed out from ground floor to sky high, layer by layer, parking by a set of elevators before she reached back and patted my leg, saying,
“It’s time.”
I grabbed my oversized floral beach bag containing the snacks and goodies my grandmother had helped me pack for my flight; packages of crackers and chips and trail mix kits, and Hubba Bubba bubble gum. Stuffed deep down beneath thick sticks of watermelon and green apple Jolly Rancher candies was the M.A.D. magazine she let me pick out, with Alfred E. Neuman’s gap-toothed grin on the cover, hiding a crossword puzzle booklet pressed silently into folds of canvassed hydrangea and hibiscus.
She opened the trunk of the car and pulled out a small suitcase with purple glitter fabric tied around the base of it, passing the handle to me.
We were the only people in the parking garage. The wheels on the suitcase squeaked and moaned, cool dawn air circulating. The bay of elevators and its mechanisms clinked from beyond the two metal doors until the sounds leveled out and the doors opened, allowing us inside.
My stomach dropped with each floor. When we stepped out onto level two, strangers wheeled solid carrying cases with bright orange contraptions that lagged behind their owners, with others pulling thick fabric cases or duffel bags slung over a shoulder.
People roamed the long hallways or stood in front of digital screens, running to catch up with customer service lines that never seemed to end with sections labeled “Hawaiian” and “American” and “Delta” and “Air Canada.”
I listened to the chatter; the foot traffic that stampeded into green carpet accented by light blue lines and geometric cream-colored patterns; purses zipped or ripped open in search of wallets while bags were confiscated, with employees driving motorized vehicles that said, “Do you need your luggage checked?”
I looked up at the ceiling as my grandmother pulled me along, skylights damp with wet and condensation. We passed ticket counters and barricades and posts, priorities and Sky Miles until we found the Alaskan Airlines queue.
There weren’t many people ahead of us and I didn’t want to let go of my suitcase when it was our turn. When I had to hand it over to the lady waiting to weigh it, she tossed it on the conveyor belt behind her, its purple fabric billowing before it disappeared for good. I didn’t think I’d ever see my suitcase again.
“Where are you going, honey?” she asked me.
“I’m going to see my aunt Vicky.”
She looked at my grandmother and winked before she turned her attention back to me.
“I mean, where does she live?”
“Walnut Creek,” I said.
“She’s landing in San Fran,” grandmother said on my behalf, placing a hand on my shoulder. “It’s her first time flying by herself.”
While they talked about unaccompanied minors and direct flights, I scooted a little to the left, eyeing a family in the next row over who wore brightly colored baggy button down shirts with birds of paradise plastered on the front. Even the toddler who sat on an upturned suitcase wore the same shirt, and I watched as he bent over and traced the patterns on the carpet with his fingers, until someone yelled at him to stop touching the floor, it’s so dirty and gross, don’t touch that.
Going through security, my beach bag disappeared within the belly of a large machine, the conveyor belt slowly crawling along until it would stop, inch by inch, and my grandmother held my hand as we walked through the metal detector, letting out a sigh when we made it out on the other side.
“I usually set the dang thing off,” she said.
When we reached our gate, I didn’t want to sit in one of the chairs bolstered to the floor. I wanted to watch the action going on outside. I leaned against a thickly paned window, witnessing suitcases thrown into the underside of a plane while I eagerly searched for my own. There were alerts sent over an intercom, with flight attendants looking for a Jane Doe or a John Smith, that they were needed at the gate counter, that the doors were going to close for a flight headed to Chicago or Sante Fe or Phoenix, and when the last luggage cart had sped away from the airport’s exterior and the heat from the sun felt hot on my face, the gate attendant called the passengers for San Francisco.
I moved quickly, one of the first in line. There were two other children ahead of me; a much younger boy, and a girl who cried for her mother in such a way that I turned around to find my grandmother, who stood off to the side, watching me.
I wasn’t sure if California was such a good idea, after all. I gripped a thick envelope in my hand; the ticket from the ticketing area. I squeezed the bag of snacks and magazines into my hip and could feel the burn of tears. When I reached the gate attendant, and she asked me for my ticket, I swallowed hard before I handed her the entire envelope.
When she handed it back to me, I took a few steps forward and turned around, staring at my grandmother, who stood lean and tall. I shoved the envelope into my bag, and when I looked at her again, she blew me a kiss.
I rubbed at the wetness in my eyes as I walked towards the entrance of the plane, crossing a threshold that separated metal from bridge, cold air and exhaust mingling with the loud hum of the engine.
A man stepped toward me and stuck his hand out.
“Hey there, I’m Jordan. Are you ready to find your seat?”
I eyed his dark blue blazer, a nametag clipped to the left side of his chest, flight wings positioned above that.
“I think so.”
He led the way up the aisle of the plane while I tried desperately not to bump into the few already seated passengers. Jordan stopped about midway through and pointed at one of the window seats.
“That’s where you’re sitting. We don’t have a very full flight this morning, so if no one else sits by you, you can spread out and put your bag on the seat next to yours.”
I scooted in and plopped into my seat, immediately buckling the belt around my midsection.
Jordan sat in the aisle seat and reached out to tug on one end of the belt, cinching it.
“We want to make sure this fits right.”
“Thank you.”
“Is this your first time flying?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“It’s going to go by so fast, we’ll land in no time. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
I nodded again, and after he walked off to tend to someone else, I stuck my bag on the middle seat.
There were rules. There were “no smoking” rules and “tray table stays closed during take off and landing” rules. Passengers traveled up the aisles, sticking carry-on luggage into bins overhead, and when the trickle died down to just one or two who made a beeline for the back, where the engine whine was the loudest, I dug into my bag and pulled out one of my magazines, settling it face up on my lap, Alfred E. Neuman staring back at me.
Jordan had come from out of nowhere, sitting in the aisle seat again.
“We’re going to get ready for take off now. I know it will be a different experience for you, and it might even feel funny, to where you feel like you’re on an elevator, with how your stomach dips.”
“Or like a roller coaster?”
“Yeah, that too. So, if you get to feeling like that, just let me know. I have to sit in a special seat in the front while we take off, but as soon as we’re up in the air, I’ll come back and check on you.”
He smiled at me, then moved on down the aisle again. His head nearly touched the ceiling of the plane as he stopped at first one row, then another, leaning in to say something to a passenger before he continued on his way.
I felt something loosen beneath my feet, floor shifting, and then I heard Jordan’s voice over the intercom, instructing everyone to fasten seat belts and watch the other flight attendants while they went over the safety rules in case we had to land somewhere other than San Francisco. While Jordan talked, the plane slowly rolled back and out and away from the airport, before it reversed and went into forward motion.
I could barely make out the sounds around me after Jordan’s microphone clicked off, with conversations swirling in from behind and in front, muffled and brief within an engine that had become louder, the plane picking up speed as I closed my eyes and gripped the armrests, squeezing as hard as I could.
Once I felt the plane lift up and off the ground, hearing the sound of metal and gears and the ding of the seatbelt sign, I looked out the window. Portland had fallen away, had slowly faded into smaller and smaller pieces until it looked like miniature toys that could be manipulated and moved around. The Willamette river grew larger than I’d ever seen it before, with tiny boats infused within its glistening green water.
We went high enough until I couldn’t see anything but white clouds and blue, and part of one wing on the plane, navigation lights blinking in rhythm.
Jordan checked on me constantly, bringing small cups of Coke with crushed ice while I worked on one of the crossword puzzles from my bag, using the tray table in front of me as a flat surface.
“Can I have one?” he asked, when I opened up the Hubba Bubba pack.
I handed over a piece of gum, and he unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth, smacking delightfully.
I never touched the snacks in my bag. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I’d nearly finished the crossword puzzle and I’d read the best parts of the M.A.D magazine when Jordan let me know that it was already time to descend into the San Francisco airport.
“It’s all in reverse now, kid,” he said.
My ears popped and filled as the plane hung in mid-air, suspended, my chest heavy while we slunk into dusty cloud matter, slipping down until we broke through the barrier, blue water stretched for miles around the airport. My head felt stiff and tight, pressure mounting as the whine of the engines dropped us closer to earth.
When we landed, the tires skidded and the plane jilted up and down, bobbing before smoothing out, my stomach bottoming. We taxied before the plane had come to a full stop, and even before that several passengers shot up out of their seats, ready to leave.
I was one of the last ones. The other children who had been on the plane must have had seats closer to the entrance, because I never saw them again.
“You ready?” Jordan said, while I dragged my bag up onto my shoulder, and he backed up to allow me space to find the aisle.
I walked to the front, empty seats scattered with used pillows and thin blankets, and when I walked up to the pilot and he said his goodbyes, he pressed flight wings into my open palm, the small silver insignia warm and proud.
The ramp moved up through an overheated tunnel until it flattened out, and I could hear the announcements from the desk attendant, just like I’d heard at the Portland airport, and I could see people standing around, waiting to catch their flights or waiting for loved ones, but it felt different; flourished. My aunt was there, with longer hair, but it was her all the same, in a white t-shirt tucked into a pair of acid wash jeans.
I broke into a run, the snack bag bouncing into my side until I’d finally, finally leapt into her arms while she hugged me tightly. I didn’t want her to let go.
“Well, I guess you know her,” Jordan said from behind, and I didn’t look back at him, or at the foot traffic, ignoring the motorized carts and the murmurings and bright lights. I looked over at the large windows of an airport gate I’d never been in before, allowing it to look different. To feel different.
I let go of my aunt and stood next to her, her equal. The concrete outside was highlighted in bright sunlight, the shine touching every surface until it faded away into a distant grove of alder and redwoods beyond, and when I squeezed the pilot wings in my hand, I knew I was ready.
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