The Big Steps

So You Know…

Dear Jordan, I was 22 when I met your mother. At the time, both of us were draped in polyester. We worked together as ushers at The Music Center and the uniforms left much to be desired in the way of fashion. Although, when it was cooler, the girls got to wear dark cloaks with crimson linings. Your mother looked beautiful in hers, like a character from one of the operas whose doors we guarded every night.

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Young Mame

She’s eccentric; the kind of girl who one day might wear satin jumpsuits to cocktail parties. She carries herself with a bubbling coolness, a contradiction of temperament. One moment she is detached as a Japanese dowager, the next vying for the gasp of an audience. Some might label her dramatic. She’d probably agree. She relishes exhibition. She moves animated, flittering in a flattened world, pushing her will upon it with an infectious charm, a large part of why I love her.

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Rite of Passage

It was the smallest tooth I’ve ever seen. Jordan held it proudly in the palm of her hand. It was a long-time coming, this one. Lucas began losing his baby teeth at five, but Jordan has been stingy with hers. 2:45 pm was the exact time of separation, duly noted by her kindergarten teacher. Poetically, she marks this rite of passage on the same day as another milestone in her life: the final day of her first chemotherapy cycle.

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An Unassuming Hero

The big blonde kid, number 9, smashed through our middle line. I think they called him Riley. He was unusually tall. A parent from the sideline joked that he drove himself to the game. He was fast, too, though he didn’t look it. He sped past our center and fixed his sights on our goal. Our defenders, only two in range, scrambled into position. My eyes swept the field in search of support.

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The Secret Society

Normal is what you make of it. That which seems boring and sedentary to one human being might summon adrenaline in another. Though nothing in our life is as it was a little over a month ago, a feeling of normality has returned to our family. The days are over-saturated with activities. The kids quarrel, then play, then quarrel again. And Jordan’s indomitable personality holds court upon our house as it has for more than six years.

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