Illustrated fiction new year post...

The teapot had been a great surprise: it came from her aunt, who had never given her a present in her life. She unwrapped it with great care, unrolling layer and layer of bubble wrap, until finally she came upon the teapot, like a pearl in an oyster. It was all glass, and as she washed it, she thought of how it would sustain her through the winter, how she would pour the boiling water in and watch the miracle of brewing unfurl as the herbs dyed the water greens and reds and blacks. When she was done with the pot and its lid, she washed the infuser, a glass cylinder that sat in the pot and demurely held the tea so it didn’t drift into the water. When it was clean, she sat it on the counter, and as she turned away to squeeze out the sponge and wipe off the edge of the sink, the infuser toppled quietly over and rolled off the counter, shattering into a million pieces on the tiled kitchen floor.

Stewardesses Illustrated fiction post by Julia F Green.

She never said anything when she flew, just put her tray table in the upright and locked position as instructed and closed her eyes during takeoff, which she’d done even when she was a stewardess, back when they were still called stewardesses. She smirked to herself. It was nicer now—they didn’t make the women wear four-inch heels or put their hair up, and they hired men, though most of them, it turned out, were fruits. It was good, she told herself, that the world had undergone these sorts of changes, but there were days when she missed the ruby red lipstick, the hairsprayed beehives, the icy cocktails in the left hand of a man who reached for her with his right.

Her granddaughter says “that’s ----ed up” but her granddaughter also doesn’t brush her hair or own a pair of pantyhose. It wasn’t that she was against equality, she just argued that life held more mystery and charm in those days. Her granddaughter argued that all that mystery and charm was fake, and prevented people from pursuing their true goals and dreams. She took this to mean that she was supposed to have wanted something besides her career in the air, but she never did. She earned her own money, she married a pilot, they had beautiful children, who brought her grandchildren, some grateful, some not.

The plane sped up, preparing to nose its way into the stratosphere. She reached for her granddaughter’s hand and pressed it between her own as they shot into the sky.