A Family Matter

by Claire Lynch

The gym is full of people in their long-loved bodies, preserving them, strengthening them, doing their part. Still,

He has not done enough, that is the trouble. He has not lived in all the ways available.

Not to mention the quiet insult of having to pay to leave your car while they check your bones for cancer.

There is a polite formality to the whole procedure, a kindness which he worries might make him tearful. Strange, how sympathy is so hard to bear.

“You’ll be amazed,” his teacher had said, “how much there is to learn from the people in your own family.” Although it was, he had to admit, much easier back when grandparents had a war to talk about.

The luck of having someone who will listen to you saying all the dull things, obvious and true, which nonetheless seem important enough to say out loud.

You cannot die, because you will be missing from the photographs of all the days that haven’t happened yet—the

She must understand that this was the difficult thing about life. The way things changed, became wrong over time, or revealed themselves to be.

The judge’s ruling, the psychiatrist and welfare reports. She hadn’t known things like that really happened, not in her lifetime. Not in her actual life. But now she does know, and it feels like reading for the first time.

The fluke of being born at a slightly different time, or in a slightly different place, all that might gift you or cost you.