The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

I saw my sister struggle, the rubbing together of two versions of herself. The first was Caroline the mother, the nurturer, a woman who wanted the kittens to live, who cared for her family and bestowed emergency hugs and made pancakes from scratch, who was worried about Joe and wondered why he did the things he did, who was trying to protect him. But the other Caroline was worn out. She wanted to get rid of the kittens; she wanted Nathan to make the pancakes for once; she wanted nothing more than to sleep a full night in a hotel bed covered with sheets that someone else had washed. She wanted Joe to take care of himself. Why should she take care of everyone? When had she signed up for that? It seemed that every year her scope of concern grew wider and more unmanageable. Preschool, elementary school, home school, the new towns, the new mothers’ groups, Nathan’s new colleagues, Nathan’s new class schedule. No. Enough was enough. Caroline needed to draw a line or she might explode. She might lie down beside the mother cat and its dozen dozing kittens and never get up again.

Oh how I relate to this...