What Child Is This_Reedsy_Out of Reach_The Porchlight
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What Child Is This
For the last song of the Christmas Eve service, twenty beaming six-year-old girls dressed as elves stood on the steps of the altar and, smack dab in the middle of them, a single boy with arms folded tight and a face scrunched up even tighter. He wore a Santa coat and hat that stood out like a spotlight against the girls’ velvet green dresses.Beth had planned on placing the stubborn, young man in the back to minimize distraction, but his mother insisted he be put front and center. Weeks earlier, she had demanded that little Doug be given a solo part, thinking how cute it would be to have the g...
Reedsy
Jim is a scrapper, both literally and figurately.Both are critical to his survival in one of Missouri’s most poverty-stricken counties. It is a mild mid-December morning and the couple, as usual, are walking the country road to nowhere. They see him from a distance. He bends over to inspect something on the ground, rearranges a few things, then stands up, takes a few steps forward and leans over to do it all over again. It is a routine seen many times.Over the last two years the couple have interacted with the scrapper numerous times, usually consisting of a simple recognition of each other’s ...
Out of Reach
I always knew what my life would look like. My daddy told me at a young age that I’d marry a good man and raise strong boys for him. I had accepted my fate without really thinking about it because it was just what was expected. By the time I was seventeen, it was widely known throughout the town that I was next to be married. My cousin Fiona had married the preacher’s son only a year earlier and she was already pregnant, hopefully with a boy. One day after I cooked breakfast for the two of us, my daddy asked how I felt about the Philips’ boy. I knew where the conversation was headed and that ...
The Porchlight
The PorchlightOk, a story about an urban legend is nothing new. We’ve all heard them. We all know at least one. Every town has them. But sometimes they are more than just a tale passed down through the generations. Sometimes they are more than an urban legend. This is just that. And, not only that, This legend changed my life.Every Halloween in the working-class city of Pittsburgh there is a middle-class neighborhood of Brookline. It’s filled with hardworking families, most of which were employed by the local steel mills or large downtown corporations that kept this steel town buzzing. ...