Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

by Clare Pooley

Life, of course, was not a competition. But, had it been one, Iona had imagined herself well in the lead. Over the years she’d secretly mocked the life choices of her contemporaries, as—one by one—they’d pulled over onto the hard shoulder of the career expressway, in favor of popping out one child after another and pandering to the needs of ungrateful, selfish husbands who’d once looked passably handsome but had grown beer bellies, nose hair, and fungal toenails. But now she looked at their pictures of children’s graduation ceremonies, multigenerational feasts around scrubbed pine kitchen tables, and even tiny newborn grandchildren blinking with unfocused eyes at the camera, and she wondered if, just maybe, they were winning after all.

Your past experiences, she’d explained, are the foundations on which you build your future. Build them on pride, not shame. Denying your history leaves your house standing on sand, always in danger of collapsing.