Observer photo by Andrew Knapp

Sometimes, I talk to my fish.

He’s confined to my bedroom. It’s lonely. I return from work. We chat.
I do most of the talking. He hears. He paces from wall to wall,
sometimes running into one. I laugh loudly. He hurries to a corner. I
keep talking. When I prepare his food, he doesn’t thank me. He only eats
while making a smacking sound. “Pipe down,” I say. He fluidly turns his eyes
away.

My other roommate returns. “Hi,” I say. “Hi,” he says.

Back in the bedroom, I finish my talk. Before midnight, I give him a
snack labeled “goldfish food.” “Night, Winston. Thanks for listening.”
~ Andrew Knapp, AU graduate student, Northwest Washington

The solace in sleeping children

My secret is that when they are asleep, I am happy. Knowing that they
are safe, I can breathe. No doubting whether I push them too much or
too little. Their peace is my peace. For a couple of hours I can
quietly slip off the responsibility of parenthood, remembering a time
when my life did not revolve around theirs. In the morning, I rise
before they do. Now I am ready for them to reenter my world. They do
so with exuberance, and I revel in it. I’ve learned to live with
ambivalence.
~ Deborah DeMille-Wagman, AU academic counselor, Bethesda, Md.