Danielle stood at the door. The birds\nawakened from their stupor and lifted off. She smiled and turned\naround. She was going to tell the kids about the miracle. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They hadn’t even noticed she had gotten\nup. She looked at her kids. They were losers. Plain as that. A hard\nthing for a mom to admit, but it was true. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If they were losers, she was a loser\nbecause she had raised them or not raised them. They had no friends\noutside of Internet ones on gaming platforms, they never took walks\nor went to a park, they never talked to each other, they did nothing\nat school, nothing after school, nothing for their community, nothing\naround the house, nothing for their grandmother who lived a mile\naway, and nothing for their mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite receiving hefty allowances,\nnone of them had purchased a single gift for their mother, not even a\ncard. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Danielle shuddered at this and then\nremembered she hadn’t picked out a gift or card for her current\nboyfriend, a Tigard city planner she’d met online a few months ago.\nHe’d put together a package of gifts that included a coupon for\ntennis lessons that he would teach himself. It was the nicest\nChristmas gift a man had ever given her and she apologized for not\ngetting him anything. Busy, you know. Traffic and all that. Mom\nduties. Work. Soon, though, soon. She was working on it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was a lie. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What the hell was\nwrong with her family? With herself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She hadn’t been raised with gadgets.\nShe rode her bike to grade school. She’d served on student council in\njunior high. She was a cheerleader in high school with good grades\nand caroused at night. She completed a business degree at Portland\nState University while working for Target and waiting a table or two.\nShe even had a dog in her 20s and walked and ran with it everywhere.\nThen came a serious boyfriend, marriage, a career in real estate she\ndidn’t care a whit about, kids, bigger houses, more money, trips to\ncorporate destinations, accumulation, more accumulation, affairs,\ndivorce, dating, and now this Christmas morning where two knocked-out\nrobins had knocked something into her. Or out. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Danielle thought she was going to cry.\nShe had to get away from the house, Tigard. Right now. Bend was her\nusual getaway of choice, but she’d seen on the news that snow blocked\nall the passes. She whipped out her phone and looked up vacation\nrentals in Manzanita, where all the Tigard people went to visit the\nbeach, but mostly shop and watch television. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Booked. Booked. Booked. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Danielle stood at the door. The birds awakened from their stupor and lifted off. She smiled and turned around. She was going to tell the kids about the miracle. They hadn’t even noticed she had gotten up. She looked at her kids. They were losers. Plain as that. A hard thing for a mom to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5781,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions\/5781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}