Kathryn Stinson
If You Had to Write a Review
“If you had to write a review for your life,” he asked, “how many stars would you give it? Say on a scale of 1 to 5?”
I couldn’t stick to an answer.
2 Stars: I was knee high to the adults, their too loud laughter, their jokes I did not understand that always seemed to be at someone’s expense. I was too small to be seen at the library counter, where my mother always made me lift my own books to the checkout and try to get the attention of the librarian, who could never see me and wondered whose pile of books just kept appearing at her station when she turned away. I was small and scared most of the time and never slept well and was sure it was all my fault.
4 Stars: I was standing in a field with my father and grandfather, in line for a view from a telescope into the night sky, away from the lights of the city, because Halley’s comet would be visible for the first time in seventy-something years. I listened to my grandfather’s voice as he rubbed my shoulders and dug his thumbs in just a little too hard, but I wouldn’t tell him because then he would stop, and I knew I wouldn’t have him much longer, though I can’t remember how I knew. I wanted to remember this. He was 75 with strong hands. The night was so dark. I had never seen so many stars.
1 Star: I came home from school the year a friend died, and no one had told me her cancer came back while I was away. I had a halting conversation that same week about the cousin I loved more than anything, the one who met me at the door when I got home from school, keys in hand, if Mom was drinking, and said, we should go get ice cream, the one who lived with us for two years because it wasn’t safe to be in his hometown. The gist of it was that he had tested HIV+, at a time when that still seemed sure to be a death sentence. I remember thinking, everyone is dying. Everyone is going to die.
5 Stars: I was Skyping with my niece, in her high chair, when she was too young to do anything but stare at the screen and smile, mealtime the best time because she had no choice but to stay in one place, and once, when her father disappeared for a moment into the kitchen to retrieve a favorite spoon, she pointed at me on the screen and whispered “Tia!”
3 Stars: My friend wrote to tell me he’d had a dream, and I was there, asking him, “What do you love, apart from the things that are easy to love,” and his answer was “Work,” which in the dream made me laugh, and in real life too. Then he asked me the same, and I considered for a moment, then said, “Unsolvable problems,” and he said, “You’re in the right place. This world is full of those.”
Kathryn Stinson is a psychotherapist and writer living in St. Louis, MO. Her previous work has been published in Beloit Fiction Journal, Belmont Story Review, and River Teeth's Beautiful Things. She is a member of Salt Tooth Writers and can be found online at katstinson.com.
