He’s four. Pasty-white, squishy chubby.
I’m his patient day camp counselor.
Currently, he’s screeching while incessantly racing around the perimeter of the shade house.
He stops suddenly, begins repeatedly smashing his tender forehead against a support column.
We know not to intervene. He’s unstoppable.
He’s the son of mother’s psychiatrist.
Sadly, this is a true story. Leslie doesn’t know what became of this child. Her mother, on the other hand, thrived, despite her shrink.
Nineteen-fifties medical protocol was shock treatment.
Mother’s psychiatrist put her in the hospital for her “breakdown.” She crocheted socks in the bleak ward.
She couldn’t remember much after her release.
She was never crazy, simply lonely for my wayward father.
He didn’t believe in psychological hocus-pocus.
He left us anyway.
Leslie Sittner has been writing prose and poetry for the last two years hoping to avoid the psych ward. With print stories in the Apple Tree and online work in Silver Birch Press, 101Words, and 50 Word Challenge, she has so far avoided admission.