Posts: Real

Are You My Sister?

Last year my sister was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, the most aggressive malignant brain tumor. Median survival is twelve to eighteen months. I won’t have much more time with my only sibling.

After the diagnosis, she was like a different person. The sister I knew for seventy years had been aggressive, abrasive, and judgmental. In our childhood home she disdained our mother and claimed the lion’s share of our father’s attention. Sullen and sarcastic, she’d roll her eyes, slam doors, refuse chores. Our parents threatened to send her to boarding school when their sporadic attempts at discipline collapsed and her insolence poisoned our family life. I always wished they had.

As we grew to adulthood, she hardened even more. Once she was settled as a wife, mother, and working woman, she trashed anyone who did not meet her criteria of acceptability: heteronormative, Ivy-educated, traditional career path, WASP-y
features, tiny body size, large bank account.

So who was this person I visited on the NYU neurosurgery floor before and after two operations? Who is this new sister I’ve been flying east to stay with every month, who speaks softly, thanks me for coming, tells me she loves me? Who is this sister who lights up when she comes down for breakfast and sees that I’ve made her oatmeal with fresh berries—her favorite—and clutches my hand on daily walks, her shuffling, uneven gait a dogged thump-drag, thump-drag?

I’ve been saying that I think she had a “mean-ectomy.” When she was first hospitalized, unable to grasp the medical language, she would gesture toward her head and make a motion like a person serving ice cream. “They’re going to go in and scoop it out,” she said, over and over. Then, whispering, leaning into my shoulder, “I’m terrified.” It was the first of many raw, intimate moments we have shared since then.

Her remaining time may be limited, but this way of being together feels unlimited. I now have a sister I can choose to be close to. If this latecomer is her real self, I’ll gladly take it. And if the lifelong persona her doctors scooped out was the real one, I’ll gladly let it go. What feels most heartbreakingly real is the way life can reveal to you what’s possible right before snatching it away.

Bija Gutoff, Portland

The Real Reason

My retirement celebration was wonderful. After thirty-five years as a volunteer at my local fire district, I felt as if all of the toasts, the slaps on the back, and the rehashed stories were well-deserved, as were the hugs and tears. The most difficult part for me was the questions my comrades asked about my reasons for retiring. As I struggled to explain my decision, my answer gradually evolved to a single line:

“It’s just time for me to be finished.”

But now, many months later, the real reason for turning in my gear and switching off my pager becomes more and more clear: I just couldn’t take any more. I was nearing some sort of mental breaking point, and I could feel it coming. And now, even though I no longer have to jump from my bed and frantically make my way down to the firehouse, I find myself grimacing and looking away when I see a car wreck or spot a column of inky-black smoke. I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, reliving some long-ago scene of flames erupting from an open window, broken bones, broken bodies. I stare straight ahead, numbly, when I drive past the places where terrible things happened to good people. And sometimes I wonder if I will ever actually be done with all of this.

John Marble, Crawfordsville

Night, Light

I used to think of owls as enigmatic—more fae folk than flesh and blood (and feather).

Documentaries assured me of this. A PBS special showed a barn owl gliding through a room where sensitive microphones tried to track her smooth air-current skim and failed. Her wing flaps did not register, held their breath.

“Nothing,” a scientist notes of the silence. “Nothing at all.”

This silence has defined these creatures my whole life. To me they were stoic, of the night, their only tell the occasional hoots that dance over moonlit tree silhouettes. Sightings were for enthusiasts who braved the dark and called into it in hopes of a response—or those who get lucky, like I did.

In September 2024, I got some dawn-lit video of two owls in our backyard speaking to each other in what felt more like a casual chat than a debrief of the latest airborne hunt. As if to prove the documentary’s point, one flew right over my head in a hushed sigh.

Show-off. I love you.

In early June, I arrived home in the afternoon, looked up at the massive tree next door, and saw one … two … three great horned owls.

Each came distinctly, their shapes shimmering out of the mops of breeze-primed leaves. The trio—a parliament, as the phraseology goes—stared down at me during a sun-soaked June afternoon. My daughters named them: Gabriella (or Gabby), Bert (inspired by the Sesame Street Muppet’s constant scowl), and Little Sis (flirty, chatty, curious).

In the following weeks, the elegant nighttime guardian aura I’d assigned to them for forty-one years disappeared. In the daytime, they responded to our hoots with silly windmill turns of their neck and head.

In the daytime, Bert met an affectionate nuzzle from Little Sis with an annoyed chirp and a slight scamper higher up the branch they shared.

In the daytime, elegant, groomed fortitude was replaced with unkempt, just-awakened feathers.

Nights are still for silent soaring over the moon-soaked fields near my house, where their fabled personas remain intact. But in our neighbor’s tree—in daylight—that legend wilts to a beautiful mess until it can bloom again in the dark.

Fakers. I love you, still.

Ryan Pfeil, Medford

Empty Vases

The day after my mom was cremated, I gathered the vases that had choked her kitchen for eighteen months of chemo. Collecting them from the dining room table, the oak cabinets, the blue countertops, I put them in a box. I was clearing room for my family’s grief. To give my dad and my seven younger siblings space to lay their burden.

This turned out to cause one of the worst fights my aunt Jeanne and I had. She filleted me for “throwing out” her sister—
my mom.

“Do you want them, then?” I thrust the clinking box of vases toward her.

Fire in her eyes, she unleashed a fury that was about more than vases. Years of hurt erupted: how everything just happened for me, how selfish I was, how I hadn’t let her plan my mom’s funeral. I fought back— she hadn’t invited me to her civil service wedding ten years before!

Jeanne unboxed the vases and placed them around the house.

I left them like that. Twenty-seven years later, they’re still there.

Those dumb cheap vases started a real rift between Jeanne and me. She took issue over how I left her out and didn’t visit often enough, how thoroughly (or not) chicken was cooked, how our parenting styles differed.

Despite all that, we hiked her woods together, went to sushi, to bathhouses. We called each other, shared clothes (hers) and jewelry (also hers). We went on road trips, took our kids to rivers and lakes.

Fighting is just how it is, I thought. My mom and dad fought, and they loved each other. My sister and I fought, and we were best friends.

“Was your mom judgmental?” I asked Jeanne, as we pulled into her driveway. After a day of boating, my aunt had called me out on my four-year-old’s vegetarianism, his lack of vitamins B and D, iron deficiency, blah blah blah.

“Not at all,” Jeanne answered, about my grandma.

“Well, where’d your judgy-ness come from?” I felt bold. “My mom was like that, too. Where’d you get it?”

I could see the shock in Jeanne’s shoulders, on her face. She didn’t say anything.

We went inside and had dried peaches and Diet Mountain Dew.

After fights, there was never an “I’m sorry” or “Let’s talk about it.” There wasn’t even a hug. There was only another mark on the calendar, the next time we would get together—always within two weeks.

Jennie Englund, Ashland

The Field

Accidents happen. Real accidents really happen.
For me, the worst one was during an exciting trip of great promise. My husband and I were moving from California to Oregon, to start anew. We were traveling north on I-5—him leading us in a U-Haul truck, me following in our car, all of our belongings between us.

Somewhere near Williams, one of my tires blew. The car swerved. I couldn’t correct it or slow it. Crossing highway lanes, completely out of control, I headed for an open field.

When they say you see “a bright light,” I know exactly how such a moment feels, how real the light is. The roadside dust quickly clouded my view, so I didn’t know until later that a barbed wire fence caught the car, the momentum flipping me over several times before I landed top down, wheels up, engine still running in that field.

Inside the car, all was slow motion and light. The surrounding glow bathed me in a strange comfort. It was peaceful, calming, a yellowish white. I accepted what was happening, and I let go of the steering wheel.

I let go.

The first person I saw, while trapped upside down and still seat-belted, was a man with long brown hair and blue eyes. I don’t remember much else about him, but that hair, I thought, seemed just right. It was surreal, me in the tall grass, the car overturned, this guardian over me. I had no idea he was a trucker who’d seen my car veer across the freeway.

I wanted my husband. Where was my husband?

Then, there he was, peering at me through the driver’s window. He had driven the U-Haul back toward me, running across highway lanes to reach me, he said.

He helped me cut the engine and climb out. We held each other forever.

I was okay. We were okay.

We left California behind, and we made it to Oregon. That was thirty-one years ago this summer.

We went on. We built the life we imagined.

Christine Sherk, Springfield

The Story of a Date

I live in a rural community where the dating pool is more like a dating puddle. So when I went to visit my two best friends in Portland, I hatched a plan. “I’m going to get on an app, pick a guy, and go on a date,” I said. “It’ll be fun—and the best part is, if it’s awkward I’ll never have to see him again.”

Minutes after I created my profile, likes and pings from city guys began to flood in. My eyes began to glaze over as I skimmed each profile. Overwhelmed, I responded to a ping from a guy who looked nonthreatening and started a conversation. We arranged to meet the next day. “He looks so sweet and clueless,” I told my friends.
“I bet he goes to comic book conventions.”

I realized I was looking forward to telling my friends the story of the date even more than I was looking forward to the date itself. It almost didn’t matter what happened with the guy—afterward I would meet up with my friends at an Italian restaurant, and we’d laugh about it.

The next afternoon, I looked up directions on my phone and walked to the place the guy and I had decided to meet, not far from my friends’ neighborhood. I felt a little guilty and mischievous—would he know that this date wasn’t totally real for me? Was it bad to do things just for the experience?

When I arrived at the address, he was waiting outside, wearing yellow hiking pants and gray running shoes. Our eyes met, and a sense of wonder washed over me. I realized I had been preparing to meet a goofy avatar, not a real person. But in the warmth and openness of his face, I saw something tender, precious, and alive.

Later, when I met up with my friends at the restaurant, I didn’t regale them with a silly story—I sat there dazed and smiling, marveling at my good luck.

Hilary Smith, Portland

Living Proof

There’s so much of my body that feels real. I can feel the breeze on my skin, how my clothes fit. I perceive how strong and tired I feel after going to the gym. I know its realness. I can also see my body—arms, legs, fingers, and toes. All of it. But seeing isn’t always the path to believing in something.

For as much as we can see and feel within and around our bodies, there is so much more that we can’t. And yet we know those things are real. I know I have bones, muscles, and nerves. I know I have organs that do important work in the background of my life. But I could never see them or feel how they worked. Until I did.

There’s a reason it’s called the intestine—because it belongs on the inside. This was a constant thought I had when I received my ileostomy at twenty-one years old. Complications from Hirschsprung’s disease led to an emergency surgery, which resulted in an ileostomy: an opening in the abdominal wall, bringing the end of the small intestine (the ileum) to the surface of the body, creating an opening called a stoma.

For the last sixteen years, I have been able to see a part of my body that most people never get to glimpse in their entire lifetimes. It’s real. An ostomy requires maintenance and hands-on attention. I can no longer ignore my intestine. Following my gut has a whole new meaning. I see it pulsate, I feel its wetness, I manage the output.

It’s living proof. It’s proof of life.

Never in a million years would I think that a solution to a major health issue would be to put something that usually lives on the inside of my body on the outside of it. But that’s the reality for me, and many others. Bodies are real, but they are also surreal. They are messy, mysterious, and miraculous. Beautiful and bizarre. I see this now. It’s surfaced, here to stay. For real.

Brystan Strong, Talent