Wreck

by Catherine Newman

“No, no, sillies, not yet,” I say to the pussycats, who are busy flinging themselves past me down the stairs, falling down the stairs in front of me, talking all the way down the stairs about their breakfast and how excited they are to eat it. I can only assume that this is how I will break my first hip.

“It’s climate change and it’s bad, whether or not you enjoy the off-season lilacs,” she said. “So you might as well enjoy the lilacs.” This seemed like a sensible enough point.

“It’s not cheating,” Jamie says. “It’s amplifying beauty. That’s just human impulse.” I think of picture frames, binoculars, lipstick. He’s right.

But every individual question was really a version of the same existential one: People are different from me. How do I survive it? “With as much grace as possible” was our answer, every time. What else is there?