“My sister was six years older than me and an overachiever. She had two degrees, a happy marriage, and three children. However, today I was wondering if her middle child was more like me than like her mother. She was wandering the house wearing what looked like her brother’s football helmet wrapped in aluminum foil, along with a discarded hazmat suit with a long sash–possibly from her mother’s bathrobe–tied around her waist and dragging behind her.
When I raised an eyebrow at my sister, she said, ‘She’s an astronaut. I think she’s on a mission to Pluto and apparently right now she’s out of the craft on a space walk.’
‘Fancy silk tether. She knows Pluto was demoted, right?’
‘I don’t care. This is the quietest vocation she’s had in a while. Apparently she communicates only with NASA on a closed channel. I’m just so glad she changed jobs.’
‘What was her last one?’
‘She was royal.’
‘Like a Disney princess? That’s pretty standard.’
‘No. She was queen. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, to be exact. She found one of Granny’s old pocketbooks, someone gave her a tiara, and she purloined my pearls. Dave had to hang a Union Jack from the flagpole to let the neighborhood know she was in residence. Then she got into a huge fight with Bobby across the street about Brexit.’
‘Wow. It’s impressive that kids are debating world events!’
‘Bobby is fifty-one. And she made him cry.'”
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.