The Custodian – Deborah Eisenberg

The Custodian first appeared in The New Yorker in the May 12^th 1990 edition. We’ll encounter another story by Eisenberg in the 2004 BASS first published in The Yale Review.

I enjoyed this story. It came in on the long side – again, I’m worried about my attention span – as so many of us are these days – and I need to get that under control. I’m sure if I look back on some of my previous readings, the story probably fits into the “normal” length category.

This story does what a short story is supposed to do and I can see why it was first chosen for publication in The New Yorker and then selected by Adams for inclusion in this BASS edition.

I think that there might be a surprising number of men and women out there (and in particular – in The New Yorker reader category) that can directly relate to the characters in this story. Either of the teenage girls, the wife of the young college professor or finally, the college professor. They can read the story laying down their own experiences next to their relatable character and feel comfort or a bit of uneasiness.

For me, I couldn’t relate to any of the characters but the story gave me the chance to be transported to this “world” and that’s another duty of a good short story.

It pulled me out of my day-to-day for ½ an hour.

I can’t recall exactly when I read this story over the past 3 months but I did need to skim over it for a few minutes to remember it before writing here.

It looks like I haven’t posted since December.

I know that I made the decision to revisit this page as I sat watching TV with the boys this morning.

Some stupid commercial came on and it caused me to think about my authentic self.

I fell that this space allows me to be in a “real” state – vs. where I have been for maybe the past 5 years.

I have changed so much over the past 10 years of reading and writing about these stories.

I want to exist more here.

Another Short Day in La Luz – Harriet Doerr

This was a very nice story to welcome me back to this collection of shorts. The struggle to read these stories continues.

Life…life…life.

This is our second encounter with Doerr. We first met her back in 2013 when I read and briefly wrote about Edie: A Life.

It looks like we’ll run into her writing again when her story appeared in the Best American Short Stories 2003.

This story appeared in the December 24,^, 1990, edition of The New Yorker. Quickly flipping through the pages of that issue, nothing really stands out to draw any sort of reflection on those times. Typical adverts for cars, booze, books, and travel. Nothing newsworthy stands out. 

In December 1990, I was home from Norwich – my first time back since leaving for school in the summer. I was a shell-shocked, shaved head, boy.

To the story. Reading this, there is a portion of the story where the main character reflects back to a tender moment between her and her husband who died three years ago.

I wonder sometimes what position I will be in (hopefully) many years from now. Will I be missed or will I do the missing? I wonder how M will reflect back on our times together.

At this stage of our lives, our days are taken up with raising the boys.

She wakes up in the mornings, tired, and finishes off making their lunches and breakfasts that I have already started preparing. She dresses them and runs them off to school as I head out the door to the paper. She has a few hours alone before the youngest returns home and lunch prep begins. An hour or so for cuddles and a light nap on the couch after lunch and it’s off to pick up big brother. Returning home, dinner prep begins and homework completion struggles rise. I return home and there is dinner followed by the bedtime routine which usually involves repeated visits from the boys back downstairs until we have to threaten them with “time out” around 9:00 on school nights. By this time, I’m wiped out and dozing in my chair hoping to get into bed by 10 so that I can wake at 5:25 and get a 10K in. 

So with this simplified overview of our daily lives, I have to wonder – if I died tomorrow, would there be tender moments that she would reflect back on? So much of the last many years have been taken up with just the day-to-day mundane tasks of living life.

This journal/blog space reflects that too and I point that out quite often. Of course, my fear is that when the time comes for us to have time together, with the boys grown and out of the house, we won’t know each other anymore. I only have this fear generated by my own insecurities.

And this is where this little short story brought me today.