Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time

by Angela Brown

“That, my darling, is because you have spent years writing out silly lists that detail what you think your life ought to look like.” The light from the window illuminated her face. “You know, it’s okay to be happy and to still have things about your life that you want to change.” She spread a napkin across her lap. “You still have time to travel the world and leave your job and dye your hair pink if you really want.”

Here’s a fact about motherhood: people aren’t satisfied with one child. The minute you pop out one kid, the entire universe feels entitled to inquire about the state of your uterus all over again. It’s infuriating.

Across Sunshine’s wooden table, piles of late-summer produce were mixed with autumn crops—plump heirloom tomatoes and waxy pink apples—like neat little piles of juxtaposition.

a tattoo of a single line connecting two black dots. I stared at it, tried to make out its meaning. Sunshine scooted back toward me. “For the record,” she explained, “it’s not a very thin barbell.” She ran her fingers across it. “I hear that one a lot.” “I’m assuming there’s a backstory?” Sunshine swooped a strand of gray hair from her face. “My daughter and I both have them.” She smiled. “It’s supposed to represent the two of us—an umbilical cord, this idea that we’ll always be connected.” She became lost in a thought. “I went through a difficult time a few years ago,” she explained and then rang up another customer.

“Well, how come you didn’t become that?” he asked, like life was that easy. I unclicked Tommy’s booster seat, smiled, and then kissed him. “Because I wasn’t a very good dinosaur hunter, I guess.”

That was the thing I was learning about death. Once you acknowledged that it was coming, you didn’t have time to feel afraid anymore.