Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

‘Always there’s one that has to pull the short straw.’

But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset by the sight of what other children craved and he could not help but wonder if she’d be brave enough or able for what the world had in store.

What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?

Neither Santa nor his father had come. And there was no jigsaw.

women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.

something caught in his throat – as though there might never again be another night like this.

to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.

‘The years don’t slow down any as they pass.’

‘This road will take you wherever you want to go, son.’

So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close.

‘My own mother was a girl, once. And I dare say the same must be true of you and all belonging to us.’

Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.

was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?

Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.