One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

Lord of the Flies is only 208 pages, and I have already read it, and it is not very interesting. It is by William Golding who won an award for showing that boys are mean and badly behaved, even somewhere nice like the beach.

Everyone needs care when they’re sick or hurt, love when they’re sad or scared, someone to tell them no or stop when they’re being unsafe. Everything else people need sometimes—and it’s a lot—is special. All of us have special needs.”

That’s the whole point of children—they keep you grounded, but another way to say that is they weigh you down.

What feels so different is having, for the first time in my life, in our lives, a little bit of control, a plan, some sense that what happens next might not be something done to us but something, for better or for worse, we do ourselves.