I point my cameraphone at the boy who is chasing a pair of robins across the park with his newly minted stagger-walk. The robins, unconcerned, barely rouse themselves to fly a few yards away…
In 1982, my parents divorce, and my mom, sister, and I move to a small house in West Concord, at the time a working class town twenty miles west of Boston. I am eight years old.
Don’t think about germs as you grip the gray carousel gate into Mexico. Consider why you didn’t bring hand sanitizer. Consider whether considering makes you racist.
“DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN,” one commenter pleaded after the piece went live. I imagined her down on her knees, white-knuckled, clutching the hem of my pajama top …