Viva La Tropicana – Leonard Michaels

 (January 2, 1933 - May 10, 2003)

What a fun story.

Michaels wrote in the Contributor’s Notes, that this story wrote itself.

You can feel it even before you read that. 

This story is written with such authenticity but contains such fantastical imagery in almost a double negative of reality that you have to believe that most of it is…not fiction.

Make sense?

This is the type of story that pulled me back into this anthology – at least for awhile – and I could be so fortunate that the rest of the stories in this volume measure up to its brilliance. 

I see that Moore, Munro, Oats, Prose and my favorite, Updike remain – so perhaps there is hope. 

I hang my hopes that my ability to write again can be ignited by these five authors.

You see, I have found myself saying to myself many times over the past year that “I struggle with original thoughts.”

I believe that I have them but I have a very difficult time voicing them. 

“How could this be?” you may ask as you read my original thoughts.

The struggle is real.

Take this project for example. It’s 2019. 

When I started this project and laid out a rough schedule of how many stories I needed to read each week from the 1978 edition to the latest edition of the anthology, it seemed very “doable”. 

I figured that out roughly 4,000 days ago – yup, almost 11 years ago. 

So now it’s 2019 and I’ve only covered 1978-1991.

A rough calculation of stories from 1991 – 2019 lands me at around 570 stories. 

Ooouufff.

That number hurts. 

Is it out of reach? 

No.

So why did I circle back around to writing about this project and the mountain I must climb to catch-up (Do I even need to catch –up)?

Perhaps this story reassured me that anything is possible. That even the most fantastic, off the wall, schemes can work – if you have the drive and will.

I suppose time is a factor too – which plays in this story - and I do have time. 

Time is one of the most valuable commodities in my life right now. I have found that I was wasting portions of it on meaningless tasks/pursuits. 

Evaluating this project, I see the value in investing my time in reading these stories. 

So, with that, I thank you Leonard Michaels and Viva La Best American Short Stories!

Glossolalia – David Jauss

I’ve written about this several times before – so much so that I am starting to tire of it -  encountering a story at a certain time, a perfect time in my life.

I doubt that this story would have had the same impact on me 10 years ago as it did today. I was living such a different life just 10 years ago.

I might have read this story, thought about it and somehow related to it through the lens of my relationship with my father.

Now, I read the story and lay it across the relationship I have with my sons.

As with many of these short stories, the icing on the cake is applied on the final page. I absolutely love this ending from David Jauss.

  

That night, though, unable to sleep, I got up and went into my son’s room. Standing there in the wan glow of his night light, I listened to him breathe for awhile, then quietly took down the railing we’d put on his bed to keep him from rolling off and hurting himself. I sat on the edge of his bed and began to stroke his soft, reddish blond hair. At first he didn’t wake, but his forehead wrinkled and he mumbled a little dream sound.

                I am not a religious man. I believe, as my father must have, the day he asked me to save him, that our children are our only salvation, their love our only redemption. And that night, when my son woke, frightened by the dark figure leaning over him, and started to cry, I picked him up and rocked him in my arms, comforting him as I would after a nightmare. “Don’t worry,” I told him over and over, until the words sounded as incomprehensible to me as they must have to him, “it’s only a dream. Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”

Perhaps I am lucky that I, in this day and age, am able to spend so much time with my children. Sure, I have a 9-5 but I am there in the mornings and I am there to put them to bed – every single night. Is this unusual? For some reason, I feel that it is. And I often feel fortunate to be able to have this time with them.

My sons sleep together. It’s nice but I realize that it won’t last long. The oldest will soon want to be in his own bed (which is right above his brother’s – yes they have a bunk bed but both sleep on the bottom).

I am able to check on them before I lay down at night and their innocence, while they lay there together asleep, is almost too much for me to handle.

They live in a worry-free world filled with love and laughter.

We work hard to provide that to them. I have found myself standing in their room silently assuring them that everything will be all right – of course, it’s more me reassuring myself that it’ll be OK.

Yes, it’ll all be OK.