Page 63 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

When the twins were five days old, Grandpa Mike came to the house with a tin of Barry’s loose-leaf tea that he has shipped directly from Ireland, along with some scones he baked himself, and a jar of Folláin Irish rhubarb and ginger jam.

He set out a little spread at the kitchen table, brewed the tea, and poured three cups. Grandma Kate might not be here in person, but she would definitely be here in spirit.

“Slàinte,” he said, raising his mug.

I tapped my mug to his. “Slàinte Mhaith,” I said. “So tell me, old man, how does it feel to be calledGreat-Grandpa Mike?” I asked him.

Instead of exploding with his usual folksy brand of joy and Irish humor, he looked at me pensively and mulled over the question. Finally, he said. “God’s honest truth, Maggie... I’m afraid to blink.”

His answer caught me by surprise. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I was born in 1933 in a wee village in County Donegal. I blinked, and I had a wife, a son, and I owned a bar in America. I blinked again, and my Kate was gone, my son was a widower, one of my little granddaughters was a doctor, and the other was a hotshot lawyer making babies of her own. And suddenly, it’s the twenty-first century, another Christmas has rolled around, and I’m a seventy-four-year-old great-grandfather. Like I said, darling, I’m afraid to blink. So think twice before you do.”

I smiled and thanked him for his wise words.

“Not so much wisdom as experience,” he said.

“With a dash of poetry,” I added.

“Well, that comes natural when you’re born in Donegal.”

We spent a glorious hour together, and after he left, I thought about my own tendency to race through life. The ten years since my high school graduation had flown by. When did I marry a surgeon, pop out two kids, and become a hotshot lawyer? Had I paid attention to the moments, or had I been too busy with tomorrow to focus on today?

I sat down at my desk, opened a Word document on my laptop, and started typing.

New Year’s Resolutions for someone who has broken every New Year’s Resolution she ever made:

Don’t blink.

That’s all. Just don’t blink.

But of course I did. No matter how noble my intentions, time refused to slow down, and my life moved on at the pace of a runaway train. The next dozen years became a blur of kids’ birthday parties, school projects, dual tonsillectomies, summer vacations, picnics at Magic Pond, and a dead possum in the attic. My career was filled with glorious triumphs, painful defeats, and the politics of working in a male-dominated system.

Maybe if I had kept a journal, those years leading up to my fortieth birthday would have stayed in sharper focus. But in truth, I was just another working suburban mom. My life was interesting, but hardly worth documenting.

With a few exceptions.

It was a lazy Sunday summer afternoon when my cell phone rang. The caller ID had a 206 area code. It wasn’t one I recognized. I answered cautiously. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was equally hesitant. “Maggie... it’s Misty.”

The two of us had emailed in the first few months after she moved to LA, but we hadn’t been in touch in years.

“Misty,” I said, genuinely ecstatic to hear from her. “How are you?”

My enthusiasm reopened the door. “Funny you should ask,” she said, sounding like her old self. “For starters, middle age is breathing down my neck. Also, I left my husband, I have a new job, and I moved to New York City.”

“I am so sorry about your marriage, but you moved to New York? I can’t believe it. Deets, girl. I need deets. Tell me everything.”

“No way, bitch,” she said, laughing. “It’s going to take us many hours and multiple bottles of wine to catch up, and we are not going to do it over the fucking phone.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I can’t believe how much I missed your foul mouth. I’ll take the train into the city Saturday, and we’ll have lunch.”

“No. We’ll have dinner, get shit-faced, and you’ll spend the night at my apartment. You missed too many episodes of the Misty Sinclair Soap Opera to catch up over a lousy lunch. Deal?”

“Deal.”

We met in the back room of a tiny French restaurant tucked away on East Eighty-Second Street. I hadn’t seen Misty in sixteen years, and she looked better than she had when she left Heartstone. “You look incredible,” I said.

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