Christy bradley
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Stories (2)
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The Cloudy Pacific
The California dream is a golden coastline, glorious water and stress-free living. Only one of those things is true. I found myself desperately missing home as my toes anchored me to the Malibu shoreline. Was this it? Violent, cloudy water? The drive to Will Rogers Beach from my Echo Park apartment had me melting like a popsicle in the driver's seat of my CRV; but somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway the seasons magically transformed and suddenly it was winter in the dead of July.
By Christy bradley4 years ago in Earth
Strange, Holy and Rare
When I was four years old I slept soundly in my second story room bed with the window open and a warm June breeze tickled my cheek. I awoke when a dream I had, a disturbing one, ripped me violently from my sleep. I wailed for Mama. Mama came to my bedside as I recounted the events of a nightmare so terrible it's recurred at least once in my slumber annually, nearly every year since: my mother standing in our tomato garden in a white polyester robe and plastic halo. "Bye bye," she told me. "I'm going to heaven." The worst part of the dream was that I could see on her face that she wasn't the least bit remorseful that she had chosen to ascend to heaven rather than stay on earth with me. Just as my pudgy hands reached for her she was gone, and my eyes tore open, and there my mama was. On earth with me. Of course I couldn't articulate any of this to her with a vocabulary of about thirty-six words, so I probably said something like, "I don't want you to go." She caressed my hair gently and wiped the cold sweat from my brow. And she said, "One day I will die. Could be tonight, you never know. And I will go to heaven and you will see me there when you die."
By Christy bradley5 years ago in Families
