By Sandra Hurtes

This is the first of a two-part series. Next week, Sandra reflects on working with writing prompts, like the one that led to this essay.

The pouring rain during my vacation in Portugal sent me and many others on my tour group to the hotel bar. We pulled up comfy chairs and formed a semi-circle around a coffee table. I was traveling alone and liked having the security of the tour group. There were people to talk to at almost all turns— on exploratory walks, during meals, on the van that ferried us around. But what to talk about when we were on our own, no tour director, no sightseeing, no scripted agenda?

Well, “the children,” of course. At least for this, shall we say, past middle-aged group. A gregarious gentleman set the tone. He described his son’s academic and athletic feats as if we knew the boy and could feel the thrill of his achievements. The son was offered scholarships to two Ivies. With a quick glance around the circle, I noted rapt attention on everyone’s face. Were they really interested? I wondered. Perhaps my growing unease didn’t show.

I stood and walked to the bar to place an order. I flirted with the bartender, who was much younger than I. It was harmless chatter that quelled my need for frivolous conversation. Back with my group, a mother traveling with her adult daughter spoke about her grandkids who had just WhatsApp’d her from a theme park. When she was back home, the kids would be waiting.

The seat close to a man traveling solo opened. In a whispered tone, I asked what he thought of the conversation. He said he didn’t mind. He had nephews and nieces, and he had never wanted his own children. That was the difference between us; I had wanted children, but my life hadn’t worked out that way. But then again, wasn’t I lucky for my capacity to converse on many topics simply because I had no children?

I was about to say, “So, where do you guys live? Anyone reading anything good?” But my mind did a 180, as I suddenly understood the shut-out feeling my mother had often spoken to me about. Around the swimming pool at her Florida condo, the women bragged about their grandkids, of which there were always a few visiting, splashing in the pool, impossible to not see. My parents were the only non-grandparents in the circle. My father played cards, and I doubt the talk was grandkids. But my mother, a gregarious and intelligent woman, was lonely among her peers. At that moment in the hotel bar, I wished that I could soothe her, tell her, “I know exactly how you feel, mom.”

I felt lonely, too, even after I turned the focus to myself. During a brief pause, I said, “I don’t have children. I’m not sure how to break in, what to say.” There was an even longer pause, but then, the wife of the braggiest man said, “I didn’t think of that. Tell us about yourself.” The stage was mine, and I fumbled for a while but found my footing once I said I was a born and bred New Yorker. Everyone related to New York—college years, theater trips, children living in Williamsburg—veering dangerously close to the children again—but wound back to a reminiscence about single days living in a tiny studio in the West Village.

I was happy when the rain stopped. I stepped outdoors with a few travel companions into the clean, fresh air. Downtown was a short walk away. We walked single file along a narrow bluff across the road. The view of the Atlantic Ocean’s crashing waves, one wave after another and another, was spectacular. Sudsy water rose and curled inside the waves. Rather than take out my camera, I memorized the natural wonder. I would call upon that image the next time loneliness took me over. I would remember, I was there.

©2026 Sandra Hurtes

Sandra Hurtes is a writer and teacher living in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Women in Judaism, and numerous other publications.

By Marlene Samuels

We’d read every book— about the experience, recovery, getting organized—plus had watched numerous documentaries. Four weeks before our life-changing event of becoming parents, our obstetrician encouraged us to register for Lamaze class taught by Nurse Practitioner Maureen McDougal, Chicago’s ultimate authority.

I was beginning my last trimester. Larry, my husband, and I were at least ten years older than every couple in the class except Maria and Enrico. The four of us hit it off immediately that first meeting. A May-December marriage, Enrico presented as an elegant gentleman. A successful architect from Italy, he was eighteen years Maria’s senior. He arrived to classes attired in his interpretation of casual: gray flannel slacks, cashmere blazer, silk shirt, ascot at his neck. We marveled that he felt comfortable for sitting on a floor mat to support Maria during our exercises. 

“Quickly, take your places, everyone!” Ordered Nurse Maureen, our distinguished instructor. She clapped her hands loudly as though calling kindergartners to order, one of her numerous annoying habits. “Folks, we’re on a schedule. Your babies aren’t!”

“Gentlemen, be seated on your mats, cradling your partner’s head in your lap. Remember, your job is to ensure her comfort!” We scrambled into position for our first exercise. Women awkwardly lowered themselves. “Men, no whining about leg cramps! Tough it out. You’re not the ones giving birth.” As we assumed our positions, Maureen shouted more commands.

“Okay, time for breathing practice. I must have undivided attention.” Everyone nodded. “First, we’ll exhale fully before deep breathing. Ready? Exhale! Now deep inhale! Hold for ten now, exhale slowly.” Maureen possessed the finesse of an army drill sergeant. By the end of our first class, she’d earned the moniker, “Lamaze Nazi.”

During week two, Maureen issued her three-minute warning to get into position. We’d barely returned to our mats following a fifteen-minute break when Maureen and my husband engaged in a stare-down, a death-glare really. He’d joked about focal-point exercises with Maria and Enrico, “I’ll bet Lamaze-breathing is like aspirin.” He whispered too loudly. “It works, but you have to believe.” They burst out laughing, actually guffawing. Larry inadvertently made eye contact with Maureen, who was hardly amused.

Sunday Lamaze classes became our weekly foursome ritual. After class, we’d go out for lunch. By our last session, Maria was too exhausted to eat out, and I focused only on changing into my Hawaiian muumuu. We had zero interest in food or socializing. “You’re due next week, right?” Asked Maria as we bid one another goodbye and good luck.

“How’d you remember?” I asked. “And you?”

 “Two weeks, three days, but who’s counting? I have a great idea! Let’s have a reunion dinner at the end of June. We each should have had our babies, and we’ll be more than ready for adult company. Interested?” An ex-fitness trainer, Maria was that pregnant woman other pregnant women resented because, from any view but sideways, she didn’t look pregnant. I feared she’d be reunion-ready well before I was.

The last Friday of June, my phone rang. I grabbed it, my shrieking newborn flat against my chest. “Hey, Marlene,” the familiar voice said, “it’s Maria. Remember me?”“How couldn’t I?”

“So, whad’ya have?” She asked.   

“A boy, three weeks ago. You?”

“Same, two weeks ago. You up for getting out yet? My mom’s helping with Giancarlo so I’m actually getting some sleep.”

“I’d love to, but honestly, I’m not ready to leave David with anyone.”

“Of course you aren’t. So I’ll cook dinner, and you’ll all come over!” She sounded like a peppy, excited schoolgirl. “We have a porta-crib, so we’ll put the babies to sleep in the same room. My mother’s in our guest room next to the nursery. She insists she’ll take care of them.”

 “Wow, that sounds fantastic!” I could hardly believe her invitation.

“Does next Friday, six-thirty-ish work?”

 I hung up the phone with a new understanding of cabin fever. The prospect of socializing underscored that it would be the first time in months I’d wear clothes not designed by Omar-the-Tent-Maker.

We parked in their building’s garage. Nervously, I lifted our newborn from his car seat while Larry emptied our trunk of enough gear for a month abroad. We entered the lobby. The doorman called our friends, announcing our arrival. “I’ll key in their floor for you.” He said, holding the elevator doors. “You’re going to the penthouse.”

The elevator doors opened directly into their apartment. Elegantly dressed, Maria and Enrico were waiting. The instant Maria saw us, she giggled, “Hey, we’re grown-ups again!”

Their stark white living room’s ultra-contemporary furniture was a contradiction to Enrico’s reserved appearance. Touring the apartment, we admired the skyline from their penthouse. Simultaneously, we realized it was time to ready our newborns for bed. Remarkably,  both fell asleep immediately, and we repaired to the living room for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Next, Maria directed us into a narrow dining room where a massive black granite slab supported on six concrete pillars served as their dining-table.

“Marlene, sit there.” She said, pointing to the end of the table. “It’s the best view of Chicago at night.” I was mesmerized by the skyline from the fifty-fifth floor. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner, several wines, a pasta first course, Osso Buco, salad, then tiramisu. Next were cheeses and shots of Grappa. We laughed hysterically. We ate chocolates. We laughed some more. Maria proved an outstanding cook. 

After weeks stuck home with less sleep than either Larry or I needed, our evening out was an excellent break, but by eleven o’clock we were exhausted. “It’s gotten so late!” Larry said, consulting his watch. “We need to get going.”

“Such a brilliant idea and fabulous evening!” I gushed to our friends. “Next time, our house.” Enrico pressed the elevator’s call button while we chatted away. The doors opened. We hugged and kissed, Italian style — cheek to cheek to cheek— agreeing to get together soon. Larry and I stepped into the elevator, totally relaxed, given the evening’s food and wine.

Suddenly, horror hijacked Maria’s face. The elevator doors were closing and she shrieked, “Oh my god, you can’t leave! You forgot your baby!”

©2026 Marlene Samuels

Marlene holds a Ph.D., from University of Chicago. A research sociologist by training, she writes creative non-fiction by preference. Currently, she is completing her book entitled Ask Mr. Hitler: A Memoir Told In Short Story.  She is coauthor of The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, and author of When Digital Isn’t Real: Fact-Finding Off-Line for Serious Writers. Her essays and stories have been published widely in anthologies, journals, and online.  (www.marlenesamuels.com)

By Sandra Hurtes

The first time I became aware of having a heart as big as my mother’s was when we left Crown Heights for Canarsie. I was almost fourteen. Everything and everyone I said goodbye to seemed fragile in a way they hadn’t appeared before. As if my leaving weakened them. When we packed up the Crown Heights kitchen, I almost cried when my mother said she was throwing away our old silverware—two mismatched sets of stainless steel—as soon as we purchased two new sets. We needed one set for dairy and one set for meat, since we were kosher. I felt a special connection to our forks, which in Yiddish we called goopels.

If a fork was missing from my father’s place setting, he would ask me, Please bring me a fleishig goopel [a meat fork]. His words seemed to rise from the soles of his feet, as if the rugged Russian terrain he had fought on during the Holocaust had seeped inside him. His heavily accented voice came out thick and gravelly, spoke of the sadness of Jewish history, told of his family’s lives that were no more.

Sometimes I accidentally messed up the silverware. I ate a cheese blintz with a meat fork. If we had lived in the country, I would have run out the door, covered the fork with soil to make it kosher, as was the law. But since we lived in the city, as soon as I realized my mistake, I struck a match and put it to the gas burner, watched the flame rise. Then I held the goopel inside the fire, burned off the dairy particles.

I followed the Jewish laws my parents selected. Although once a week, my mother and I went out for chicken chow mein against my father’s knowledge. As we scurried down Utica Avenue to the darkened restaurant, she told me, “It’s our secret.”

We sat at a small table like spies and ordered wonton soup from Column A and an egg roll from Column B. We shared the one bowl of soup which we slid back and forth between us. All the while, my mother told me things about my father. She said he was cheap, his sisters were mean, he didn’t give her enough money for the house. That was why we shared the soup.

I ate two or three spoonfuls, leaving the strips of pork which my mother loved. I told her I was full, said she should finish. That’s what my mother had done in her shtetl in Czechoslovakia. She saved her food for the others.

When my mother and I strolled the promenade of Eastern Parkway, we memorized the walkway’s terrain. Trees sprang from the edges of the sidewalks; in spring, branches arced over us, blossomed with color, so that pink petals carpeted our path.

My mother. Goopels. Eastern Parkway. Everything I loved was alive with feelings and needs. When we threw away the goopels, I imagined them rising out of the garbage can, flexing and dancing in the air. The friends I left behind in Crown Heights waved a sad goodbye, and I promised I would return, see you soon. But my words were stiff, due to my self-consciousness of expressing love for anything outside my family.

My heart was big, maybe bigger than my mother’s. But she could never know.

©2026 Sandra Hurtes

Sandra Hurtes is a writer and teacher living in New York. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Women in Judaism, and numerous other publications.

By Donald A. Ranard

“In memory of Amy Ranard”

He’s an orange tabby, a big-bellied, easy-goin’ good ol’ boy from Wilmington, North Carolina, 16 when we bring him back to our home in Arlington, Virginia, after the sudden death of my sister, his owner—wait, “pet parent,” the preferred term among animal lovers—though Goober at 16 is 80 in human years and therefore older than his parent, who died alone in her apartment, her body found four days later, Goober by her side. Turns out the good ol’ boy belly is a tumor and Goober might die at any moment, says the vet, who wants to put him down. I’m a dog person, not a cat person (I know, I know, in the eyes of cat people, that makes me a control freak, even a closet misogynist, cats being independent, inscrutable, and, regardless of gender, feminine), but I love my sister and decide to do what she would have wanted me to do—let Goober live out what’s left of his life, until there’s pain—and that evening we take him outside in the last light of a late summer day to see and smell and hear what he, an indoor cat, has never seen or smelled or heard before. He sits up in my lap, suddenly alert, twitching his tail and jerking his head back and forth and up and down, trying to keep up with it all: cardinals and crows jockeying for position at the bird feeder, squirrels leaping from tree to tree, our resident rabbit nibbling the woodland phlox, a lone flickering firefly, a breeze rustling the leaves, carrying scents no human nose can ever know. He looks up at me in disbelief. It’s something, isn’t it Goober? I say. Overwhelmed, he curls himself into a ball in my lap and falls asleep, dreaming of his strange new world that has such creatures in it. My wife looks at us and smiles. “I guess he doesn’t know you’re not a cat person,” she says.

PS On Saturday evening, January 31, 2026, a year and a half after we brought Goober home, he passed away peacefully, lying between us on his favorite spot on the couch.

©2026 Donald A. Ranard

In addition to True Stories Well Told, Donald A. Ranard’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New World Writing Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Vestal Review, The Washington Post, The Best Travel Writing, and many other publications. In 2022, his prize-winning play ELBOW APPLE CARPET SADDLE BUBBLE placed second in Savage Wonder’s annual playwriting contest. Before settling in Arlington, VA, he lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.