My Son Told Me Not to Come for Christmas but Two Days Later My Phone Would Not Stop Ringing

was not prepared to reverse it.

“Aunt Rosa’s,” he offered, the way you offer something you know is inadequate but have nothing better available. “Or we could do something the weekend after. Lunch, maybe. For New Year’s.”

Another weekend. Lunch. As if Christmas were a dentist appointment, reschedulable, inconvenient, a thing to be moved around the preferences continue reading …