“Superstitions are all I have to protect you.”

Before this morning, I didn’t know what the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize was. But I read the winning story by Esther Hayes, titled “What I Could Have Given” in Electric Lit, and thought about it all day. Starts like this:

My mother—your grandmother—taught me about animals. Every day, we woke with the sun and had fresh eggs before starting our chores. Be patient when cooking eggs, she said, even when you’re hungry. Never let the pan smoke. Another important thing: keep your hens from going broody. At the first sign of this instinct, stick her in a wire dog cage and only let her out to eat. 

Doesn’t seem like much, does it? By the end, I was fighting back tears. Someone very close to me was given away by her mother as an infant, and their reunion was both incredible and incredibly difficult for them both. This story brought a lot of those memories back, and made me realize that I hadn’t really considered it from the perspective of the mother.

It’s gorgeous and it’ll only take like 10 minutes of your day. Go read it.

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