Welcome!
to the twentieth (!) edition of Tiny True Stories! If you’re new here, hello, and thank you! I’m so happy to see you. It seems like my Substack Notes are just full of people talking about how to grow your Substack, which bums me out a little bit. In the world of Substack, I am the smallest of potatoes. But I agree with what I saw someone else write: if all 300 of you got in a room and wanted to read my writing, I would fall over. I am so thankful, truly, for every one of you.
This is a monthly newsletter where I share supershort true stories you can read in 5 minutes or less. If you want to get right to that story, scroll on down past the picture!
I also share recommendations for other things I loved this month—food, books, poems, memes, anything. Tiny does not just mean short—I write about the forgotten, small, mundane stories of our lives, where most of us spend most of our time, and look for their unexpected magic.
This month I turn 38. For the first time ever I don’t really feel like celebrating, and not because 40 is right there (oh my god, 40 is RIGHT THERE), but mainly because my head is so full of other things it doesn’t feel significant to me this year.
What unbelievable luck, to take your birthday for granted.
And I realize I am a hypocrite, given what I just wrote above, but as a birthday present to me, please send this newsletter to someone you think might like it! I’d love to share my tiny stories with more people, and the best way to break through these tech oligarch fools’ algorithms is for people to share what they think is important. Let’s do this.
Today’s Tiny True Story
I had a whole other story written (about the magic to be found in barfing on an airplane, if you can believe it), but this one popped up all on its own, and it seemed right for a birthday month in the face of a government that is proving over and over again that it does not care about whether most of its citizens live or die.
My Daughter Asks Me the Question
In the bathtub, my four-year-old daughter asks me why the dinosaurs went extinct. She loves trying to figure out words, and so she wants to know: was it because they “stink”? As always, when these things come up, I’m tempted to lie, to soften the blow. But no, I tell her the truth. I tell her I love the way her brain is trying to figure it out. We’ve talked about extinction before, but she needs to go over these things again and again. As she gets older, she keeps asking, as if she needs to learn it anew, with a mind that can handle just a little more.
Then she asks me the question I’ve been dreading. “Mommy, what happens when you die?” She looks up from splashing, and I fix my face to try to look unbothered, competent. To buy time, I ask her what she thinks. She hasn’t really thought about it, and shrugs. The temptation to lie surfaces again. I owe her the truth, and not to show her the world can be harsh and brutal, but to show her that she can come to me when it is. So I answer: when we die, our bodies stop working.
She says, sweet, and so sure, and breaks my heart, “But you can come back, right?” She has started playing at death, which I hate, but Disney teaches death just as much as it does princess dresses. Kill the Beast! I’m going to kill Elsa! When she pretends at killing bad guys, they always get back up. Yes, I want to tell her—you come back as sunshine, as a bird, as a song, as a dream, as a breeze, as a thunderstorm, that we don’t know, really, but that spark of you can never be destroyed. But I know it’s not time for that yet.
I answer, simply, “No, baby,” though she is no longer a baby, my own tongue stuck in a time long ago. “No, your body does not start working again.”
She tries to bargain, like she always does. “How about just one time?”
No, I tell her, not even one time. She thinks, pushes her plastic ponies around under the water. She does not consider it drowning. They are only swimming, jumping out of the water to fly then back under again, over and over. I think the next question is coming.
But it does not come. She is satisfied, and her ponies go to the water park. They slide down the slope of the tub, and she says “whee!” as they bonk into the water, immortal. I have more time to think about how to tell the truth when she asks about other people dying, about my death, about her own. It will never be enough time. Today, only dinosaurs die.
Today’s Letters of Recommendation
We just got back from a short trip to Sonoma and went to a birthday dinner at the Glen Ellen Star and holy shit—we had a wagyu steak and it was delicious but the mushrooms that came on the plate were also MIND-BLOWING? Honestly maybe one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. For dessert I had the chocolate “almond joy” mousse, with brownie bits, almond coconut streusel, and peppermint chantilly. If someone threw all my favorite things into a dessert it would be this. Also incredible. The waitress also shook up my daughter’s soda before she brought it out so it wouldn’t be too bubbly, and brought a toy from her own stash for my son. Five stars.
I realize I’m years behind on this, but I finally finished Bridget Everett’s semi-autobiographical TV show “Somebody Somewhere.” What a beautiful, perfect prism of a show. This is a story about loss and friendship—the biggest romance of the series is the platonic one between two friends, a different kind of soulmate. Perfect combination of seriousness and humor.
This essay “What Time Is It?” by Jeff Wood, about his wife’s Alzheimer’s, and confronting his own mortality. Beautiful.
I never know how to sign off these, especially in the middle of a hostile government takeover. I wasn’t able to protest because I was on the road, but I was so happy to see so many of you doing it. Let’s keep being loud, in any way we can.
Until next time,
Jill
What a gift, each of these missives every month <3
Really enjoying your sparse, clear pieces, Jill. This piece captures that feeling that existed/exists in so much of parenting, for me--that we're really role-playing a part we're unprepared for. And we care so deeply about the consequences. But the clarity of our intentions alone somehow makes us equal to the task. Death is a big one. Well done, and beautifully written.