(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Mothers Inc.
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)

When her father died, Flannery retreated to the attic to draw and write. Sylvia made grand pronouncements: "I'll never speak to God again." Flannery did not speak of her father. Sylvia did not write of hers in her 1940s journal, nor did she mention Otto to her best friend at the time. Two heartbroken, daddy-less girls, their wellbeing now reliant on the survival skills and fortitude of single mothers in a working world that did not favor females. Given the unhappy state of her marriage, Aurelia might have felt relief at escaping the bonds of that entanglement if not for the financial strain a partner-less existence imposed. Otto had no pension. The payout to his modest life insurance policy was quickly spent.

Kat Meads
 

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