Trek
You know how I go to Dairy Queen every afternoon? Today I saw two women about my age pushing baby strollers heaped with stuff covered in plastic sheeting and held in place with rope and bungee cords. The plastic shined and bulged in the slanted afternoon light. At Dairy Queen just Jasmine was working. The ice cream machine was not. Jasmine had the tech there trying to fix it, but she said she thought it would be a while. No lie, she said. I got a Dilly bar instead. On my way home I saw the baby stroller women again, pushing their strollers up a small incline where the street rises. On the news I saw that diapers for a baby cost about a hundred dollars a month. There was also a story about a woman who went on a trek to Tibet to work on feeling grateful and forgiving herself. She needed oxygen just once. It took her three days.
Polly Walker Blakemore is a writer living in Louisville, KY. You may find her work on Substack @pollywalkerblakemore where she writes a series based on the journal she has been keeping for 35 years.