Medium – Donna Moriarty

First Kiss

It’s just a drink — it doesn’t mean anything

Two mouths coming together in a kiss, one with a stubbly chin and the other with slightly glossy lips.

I get off the A-train at 86th and Central Park West and climb the steps to the street. It’s three blocks to the address on a piece of paper I’m holding in my hand. My breath is coming fast. I try to quiet the butterflies with reassuring, grown-up wisdom: It’s just a drink, just two friends getting together.

Half an hour, one drink. Then I’ll tell him it’s time to leave for the concert. I don’t want to be late, I’ll say. I don’t want to miss Seals and Crofts performing one of my favorites, The Boy Down the Road.

The late spring sun spreads a peachy glow over the flowering trees in the park. I turn down 89th Street, pausing to allow enough room for two riders on horseback to nudge their mounts around a taxi waiting at the curb.

After the Shattering

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What feels like the end of everything is always followed by an ordinary day.

Woman with long brown hair sits solemnly on concrete stairs with her knees up and palms together in a fist in front of her mouth, staring at the ground

Not long ago, I reached a turning point in a major writing project to which I’d given my heart and soul — a memoir about the stillbirth of my first child. I stumbled across a photo of the obstetrician who had delivered our baby. Stunned and triggered by the long-buried memory, I couldn’t write. After months of agonizing writer’s block, I set the manuscript aside and tried to accept that it was over.

Easter was approaching, and I caught myself thinking about the stories I’d grown up with: Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. Sunday, with its empty tomb, and three startled women who had come to ritually anoint the body.

But what about Saturday? I imagined what that day was like for the women, who were required by Jewish law to wait until the Sabbath passed before proceeding with their sorrowful task. I imagined what it must have been like to see their dream of a better world die along with their beloved teacher.

When life deals a hard blow — a death or diagnosis, a loss of job or home — it rocks our world and changes everything. After the shattering, all that remains is another ordinary day. We rise, wash, and put the kettle on. We sit down to a manuscript that’s a holy mess.

The Apology Dream

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For Yom Kippur, a tale of forgiveness and an apology… of sorts

Woman looking down at her keyboard with eyes closed and hands up towards her forehead while a man behind her points at her screen and looks like he's reprimanding her

During my sixteenth year working in an executive position at a medical school, a new chancellor was hired and became my new boss. He seemed to take an instant dislike to me, going to great lengths to correct, humiliate, or make an example of me almost daily. It wasn’t long before I dreaded coming to work.

This went on for nearly two years, from his first day on the job to the day he called me into his office and “invited” me to retire. After spending thousands on a lawyer — several other women of my age and station were suddenly leaving, hinting at discrimination — the resulting separation agreement included a non-compete clause that prohibited me from working in my field.

I’d given my best years to the organization. I had served as a trusted member of the president’s cabinet. I had allies and loyal staffers. But once I signed that severance agreement, I was shunned. There was no farewell party, no thanks, and no fond goodbyes from the people I’d served with for almost two decades.

Faith and My Father

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How can we access the inner fortitude that can carry us through darkness?

On the streets of New York, it’s raining babies. Infants and children are everywhere — in strollers, carriages, front carriers, back carriers. The ache under my ribs, that familiar, grasping feeling, urges me toward the babies I pass on the street. Or, rather, toward just one. A single infant reaching for me, who nuzzles for my breast, one whose eyes meet mine.

It’s been almost a year since I gave birth to a stillborn daughter. The cavity it carved in the middle of my being still throbs. I feel it as I stand in bright sunlight, angry as thunder, waiting for the empty place to be filled.

It’s November, and all over the news is one story: Princess Diana is pregnant. People are falling all over themselves–an heir, an heir! The television reports capture the dewy mother-to-be from every angle. She is constantly surrounded by admirers reaching out their hands, photographers snapping photos as she ducks her pretty head for meager protection against the constant whirr and flash.

I stare at the television, listening to incessant details — her due date (summer of next year), her morning sickness (or lack of it), where she will deliver the baby, the baby. I wish everyone would shut up about the royal fucking baby.

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