Issue 482 | The Sun Magazine

February 2016

Readers Write

Breakfast

A chocolate sundae, a perfect joint, a freed man’s first meal

By Our Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

The Ledge

The boy did for the fisherman the greatest thing that can be done. He may have been too young for perfect terror, but he was old enough to know there were things beyond the power of any man. All he could do he did, by trusting his father to do all he could, and asking nothing more.

By Lawrence Sargent Hall
Quotations

Sunbeams

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.

William Stafford

The Sun Interview

The Kids Are All Right

David Lancy Questions Our Assumptions About Parenting

Parenting trends are less about what’s good for the child and more about parents’ need for affirmation. The message of my work is that parents have far less impact than they think they do.

By Mark Leviton
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Night Of The Moose

Our car climbs a hill, and as we descend, we see it: A dinosaur. A swaying beast, disappearing into the woods. There’s a car stopped on the other side of the road, its doors open. Did it stop to see the dinosaur? No. The dinosaur stopped the car. A woman stands in the road, waving her hands. We see two young girls in T-shirts and shorts but no shoes, standing together in sparkling shards of glass, screaming. Billy slams on the brakes.

By Sarah Braunstein & William Giraldi
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Twenty-Three Weeks

Dr. C. doesn’t sit, as if he won’t be staying long, but he does have information for us. He says that 75 percent of women deliver within a week of membrane rupture. He says that if they induce labor now, and Olivia is alive, we will have complete say in her care and how much we want the doctors to do to keep her alive. But if I deliver a few days from now, my daughter will be twenty-four weeks, and the hospital’s ethics board will step in to limit our choices.

By Genevieve Thurtle
Photography

Where The Wild Things Are

Trained as a sculptor, Alain Laboile first picked up a camera to take pictures of his whimsical sculptures of animals and insects, but after the birth of his fifth child, he began to focus the lens on his growing family at home. He and his wife, Anne, now have six children — four girls and two boys — and are raising them in a remote region of France.

By Alain Laboile
Poetry

Ode To A Summer Evening In France

We ate snails from their shells, dipped bread in the sauce. / The man we were visiting poured more wine, / said he hoped we’d stay a long time.

By Catherine Freeling
Poetry

The Same Movies

He never listens to my dreams. “Dreams / aren’t real,” he says dismissively. And he’d prefer it / if I filled out a rebate for a toothbrush instead of starting another / poem.

By Joan Murray