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This week’s essay: Finding the courage to do hard things.
Weekly Featured Essay
A Last Custard Cup
by Katje Lattik
Back when I was new to Chicago and still finding my footing, I was faced with living in a physical world that had been severely limited by a global virus and a personal choice to be miles away from the people I knew. I retreated to the virtual world. Everyday across my TikTok feed I was served video after video of cool, beautiful, rollerblading girls gliding down southern California streets in the bright sunshine while they filmed themselves from above. I would watch them sideways on my phone while I rotted in bed and marvel as the muscles in their long, tanned legs pumped, pushing them effortlessly in circles and zigzags and spins. The videos were set to 70s songs I thought I was the only millennial cool enough to know, and the girls wore dolphin shorts, tube tops, striped tall socks, and all the other accessories necessary for a pastiche of that decade.
The idea of becoming the roller rink queen of my dreams would not leave my head. I convinced myself the biggest hurdle would be getting over the financial pain of buying new skates in my size. I had moved to Chicago without a job, so desperate to get away from my past and feel like I was making progress in life that a matter like securing employment seemed a trivial thing to wait on. Several months later, I found myself employed at the first place that would have me, an office job at a small, new company in an ethically ambiguous industry. What at first seemed like an unforeseen perk—mostly female coworkers born in the same year as me who had also recently transplanted to Chicago—I eventually came to understand was actually a symptom of our below market pay.
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A Last Custard Cup
by Sydney Lea
The cup was never used for custard; it held my father’s coffee or a drink he made for us children, one he called milk punch. The cup may be made of terra cotta, but it would make too facile a metaphor for fragility; of the original set, it’s the one to have survived. What I really recall anyhow is the gentle hand that warmed the milk, added the vanilla, sprinkled the nutmeg. Its simple gestures seem golden now.
And if I want a figure for fragility, that’s easy enough. I remember following a game trail a few Marches back, for instance, my first hike after two knee replacements. I meant it to be easy, but a winter gale had laid tree after tree across the track. I’d be out longer than I’d planned, but that seemed fine to me. I thought of all the animals that had depended on the trail for pursuit or escape or mere travel. Fragility everywhere.
My father has been gone sixty years, and his cabin in the woods belongs to others. To think of his early death is still to grieve; but I was brooding on more recent loss as I walked the ridge that morning: My friend David, champion wrestler and marathoner, had been buried a week. I smiled to recall his goofy wit and his typical, frumpy attire, as drab as this cup. No need for adornment if you look like David.
Better at Being Human
by Allysa Raymond
When Evie runs into a room, it’s like the air makes space for her joy. She’s four, all spark and sincerity, with blonde curls that bounce and questions that don’t stop. “Auntie,” she says, tugging on my sleeve, “why don’t clouds fall down?” I don’t know, I say, and she nods like that’s a fine answer. With Evie, not knowing things isn’t embarrassing. It’s just an invitation to wonder.
I’m seventeen, so according to most people, I am at an age meant for maintaining distance from everyone, a time most associate with eye rolls, impatience, and obsession with fashion or makeup over anything else. But I defy such societal expectations. On weekends I choose to spend my time with the four-year-old who lives next door, the one who calls me “Auntie.” We color, play Barbies, and sing songs. She talks about flowers, fish, and band-aids with equal fascination.
The Day the River Spoke
by Nisar Kakar
The morning carried the smell of wet earth and mold, thick and damp as it rose from puddles scattered along our street. Our house stood on a slightly raised lane at the edge of Killa Saifullah, close enough to the river that we could hear its distant murmur during the monsoon, but far enough—until that day—to feel safe.
Overnight, the water had crept in.
It seeped through the cracks beneath the door and gathered along the walls, spreading across the floor in a slow, determined advance. Standing barefoot on the slippery surface, I could hear the river now—not distant, but deep and restless, its rumble rolling like a warning.
Veterans
by Pamela Cravez
We’re on a working vacation over Memorial Day weekend in Denver. Our work is babysitting our granddaughter while her mother goes to a conference and her father has meetings. Our job description is vague, but we’re told she likes playgrounds, she can walk (which we interpret to mean don’t spend too much time pushing her in a stroller), and when she is transferred between our adjoining hotel rooms she comes with her favorite stuffed animals clutched to her chest, Sloth, Bear, and Goat.
She is nearly a year and a half old and hasn’t seen us for a few months since we live in Alaska and she lives in Connecticut. She registers her annoyance at being left with us by sticking out her bottom lip, then standing on her toes and throwing her stuffed animals into the crib.
My husband picks them up and hands them back to her one at a time, until she has them all in her arms. She gives a defiant look and throws them back into the crib.
He retrieves them.
Her mouth curves up.
Game on.
Winter Protocol
by Joe Class III
28.
That’s the magic number.
Not 29. Not 30. 28 degrees Fahrenheit, sustained for a minimum of six hours, confirmed by the National Weather Service station in Romeoville. When that happens, our community center network activates Winter Protocol. Our four facilities in the southwest suburbs open at precisely 6 p.m., with cots and blankets at the ready. Volunteers sign in. I start the coffee. Janie drags in the folding tables from the back room, Barry helping her, and they line them up near the entrance. That way, each person coming in has somewhere to set down whatever they may be carrying.
Winter Protocol? It really does work. I want to say that first. Without it, people who would otherwise be outside in the cold are inside, safe, warm, and fed until 7 a.m. the following morning. Volunteers come from Lockport, Bolingbrook, Plainfield, and Romeoville, showing up on school nights and weekends, all without being asked twice. The network coordinator, Diane, has been running our location since 2019, keeping logistics moving with a quiet efficiency that only looks easy because she never stops working.
It’s a good program.
But the magic number is still 28.
That means someone sleeps outside when it’s 31.
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