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Tag: Ashley

Who Is Watching The Children?

I drink whiskey because I like how it sounds, rolling out of my mouth and onto the bar. The burning sweet bite at the close of each swallow has grown on me over the years, and where I once had to brace the back of my tongue for the awaited burn, that same tongue now salivates when I near the well. This behavior is learned, imprinted. I’ve adapted to the thick warmth it brings. What I can’t accustom myself to, what I should not have to accustom myself to, is the side-eye glance, the blazing double standard that follows in its wake.

Ashley

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At Your Service

I am 20 years old. I am perched on a stool staring out across rolling greens, straining to see incoming dots on the horizon. Golf carts buzzing along the paved path toward my outpost for the day - a halfway house nestled in the hardwood forests and carpets of grass, lily pad ponds with the croak of frogs and heron calls. I am bored with flipping burgers and moving sausages from warming pot to grill face, freshening them up, bringing them back to life for the next customer. I hear the cart approach before I see it. Four golfers stroll up and peer through the open window. Men. Always men. I get down from my perch and stand there as they size me up. Eyes scan my body, tip of my head to tennis shoes. They move from shock of blonde, blue eyes and matching polo, khaki shorts mid-thigh. I shift my weight from left to right, smile, ask what I can get for them.

Ashley

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Little Boy in a Lifeboat

Five of us sit, silent in a 10 x 10 hospital room. Our foster son is on an operating table down the hall having a minor procedure which feels major given the previous months of recurring illness and sleepless nights. We are hoping this one finally does the trick. The last procedure, six months prior, brought little improvement. This day feels different, though, and I have hope, so much hope for so many things, a number of them in contradiction to one another. I hope for resolution to this little guy’s ongoing sickness. I hope for growth and stability for his mother. I hope for permanency for our foster son and for his family…and also for our own. Living in this world of unknowns that stretch on 90 days at a time has beaten me down. I hold all these things at once, constantly reframing these hopes, these portraits of permanency, into a picture equaling the very best outcome for this child all the while knowing that “best” is a subjective word.

Ashley

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The Other Side of Failure

I’m failing at this balancing act - this act of playing wife and mother and career woman - I’m failing at all of it. But from the outside, from the perfectly orchestrated picture I’ve constructed for you, you would not understand. Because I don’t want you to. I’m putting forth all my effort to make sure you do not see what I don’t want you to see. My children have food and a safe, organized home. I have a husband. He smiles in our pictures and holds my hand. They are loved, my family, and they know this. In my professional life, I show up in clean clothes that are almost on trend. My hair and makeup are done, and my youthfulness can still cover what a hairstyle and lip gloss can’t. I finish my tasks on time. My patients are cared for. When I’m at work, I am there and I am stellar and I look victorious.

Ashley, Katie

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See Me

It was Sunday. Our family had pulled itself together, dressed and pressed, all in clean underwear, and ventured to church. This doesn’t happen every Sunday. It doesn’t even happen every month, but somehow, we got ourselves spit-shined and into the car on time. The boys were excited to play with other Sunday schoolers, and I was excited for 45 minutes of kid-free time and a hot coffee...and the Lord’s message, of course. My tired soul needed it. The littlest one started screaming before we hit the door of the 2’s room and continued his hysterics across the vibrant carpet to the corner where he stood sobbing into the wall. The stone-faced woman assured me all would be fine. She wasn’t convincing. But that coffee...we slowly backed away and moved on to the next room. He was young. He wouldn’t remember.

Ashley

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Making Snow Days Out Of Storm Clouds

Yesterday, I cried into the arms of my six-year-old. We were on snow day 12 or maybe 27. I’d long since lost count. We'd been riddled with fevers and vomit and rashes and runny noses since the onset of winter. Cancelled school made these days drag on even longer. Surrounded by buckets and couches-turned-sick-beds, I was certain I would never make nightfall when my husband was due home on a flight sure to be delayed given the Armageddon-esque weather patterns of late. The sitter I’d lined up for the afternoon had cancelled with the pending blizzard, forcefully crushing my aspirations of accomplishing anything for the remainder of the day with the ding of a text. I hadn't accomplished anything in weeks.

Ashley

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Remember Me This Way

I’m learning to parent like I’m dying. Tomorrow, or next Tuesday, sometime soon. Death is imminent. And really, it kind of is. In the grand scheme of things, the hundreds of millions of billions of souls floating back and forth from Earth to sky, our death is imminent. We are all dying. Every day. Every second. This morning, I laid on the floor with my middle child, his chubby fingers stroking my shoulder. He picked up my arm as he always does, turned it inward with both of his hands, straightened it and kissed the folded skin of my elbow. Twice. Three times.

Ashley

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