I need to learn this and stop being surprised when it happens…
The kid got sick over the weekend, and it through everything off.
We aren’t mad at the kid for getting sick, because getting is sick is what kids do about half of the time. No, we were both amazed and taken aback by how much the kid’s illness destroyed out mental wellbeing.
Let me explain…
We had a fun, but busy weekend planned. We were going to get our Halloween pumpkin, and complete other Fall errands. The kid was going on a sleepover with a friend, and there was her soccer match on Sunday. Then we had shoe shopping planned, well you get the idea… Lots of stuff.
But for the past few days, the kid had been saying that she wasn’t feeling right, and she did have a stuffy nose. Anyway, since she was going to a sleepover, and being around a bunch of kid for soccer, I thought, just to eliminate any questions, that we’d pop in to the local minor emergency clinic to check her out. And that’s when we found out that she was actually, really sick, and contagious for the next 24 hour before the antibiotics kicked in.
In one sense, I felt a little good that I was a responsible parent and took my kid in, and got her the care that she needed.
But what me and the wife also felt was that our entire weekend, if not life, had just spun outta control, and NOW we were over whelmed with everything that we had to take care of. We even felt a little paralyzed, unable to get up off the couch to take care of anything other than our kid. We were both surprised at how fast this feeling of helplessness came over us. In all honesty, we have dealt with much much worse things and situations, and handled it with a smile and a good sense of humor. This was a pretty minor issue… but our reaction was completely deflated and defeated.
By Sunday, we had snapped out of it and righted the ship. Things are all better, but we’re back on track. Yet, even this morning, we were still bewildered by our reaction from Saturday.
(The short story “Intimacy” by Ayşegül Savaş appeared in the October 20th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)
Photograph by Elinor Carucci
“Intimacy” by Ayşegül Savaş has been sitting with me for a couple of days now. I’ve read it three times, and I am still mulling over the construction of it, the theme, the use of language, and the lack of it as well. I keep thinking that there is a simplicity to this story, but that is just an illusion to its complexity. I want to believe that I would never behave like the protagonist, but honestly, I completely behave like the protagonist. Savaş uses the normal short story tricks; foreshadowing in the first paragraph, use of the rule of three, and uses the death of a character as the climax. But Savaş uses these tricks, and a few others, is such ingenious ways, that this story feels fresh, and left me wondering, and I mean this in an intriguing positive way, what is going to happen next?
To describe the plot I feel is rather a meaningless exercise as it won’t get to the heart of what makes this a compelling story. Here goes anyway: In an unnamed city, there is a group of expats from an unnamed country. The groups tries to support each other in adjusting to life in this new city, and to that end our narrator, who is a published writer, is connected with an older and very successful writer from the same expat group. They have lunch together. The lunch goes well, and eventually the older writer brings his wife to a lunch and the narrator and wife hit it off. Then the narrator and the wife go out and have a picnic together which also goes well, but the narrator drops returning text messages from the wife. One reason is that the narrator’s very young daughter breaks her clavicle. Through a dinner party later in the story, the narrator learns that the writers wife is ill. And maybe that’s a good place to stop.
Through the story I kept wrestling with what to make of the narrator. On one hand, I was perplexed by some of her decisions, but on the other hand, I had to admit I have made the same choices that she does. Such as when talking to the writer about traveling back to their home country, she omits telling him how her children cried and complained wherever they went, but made it sound like the trip was ideal. Not exactly a lie, but also not the truth. In another example, she doesn’t inform the daycare of her child’s fussiness which could help explain when the kid’s accident occurred. Her reasons for the omissions are understandable, but in another light of perspective, she could be viewed as manipulative. These are but two examples the narrator makes that left me with a feeling of ambiguity, which played well into the theme of this story.
Then there was the use of language. As I alluded to before in the description, virtually everything is left unnamed. No cities, countries, locations, and especially proper names. Only two are used, and they are deliver deliberately to have the perfect impact on the story. Not only do the name reveals play into the theme of intimacy, but it also ties back into the motivations of the narrator. Why does she choose to reveal them at that time and in that manner? Furthermore, the language is smart, direct, cutting, but also vacant and void of a deeper meaning or connection. The narrator’s word choice appears to be open, but they are a defense, keeping people away.
Through all of this, I have been chewing on the theme of “Intimacy.” What is Savaş trying to say about how people open up, and close themselves off? The narrator mentions a husband, and how they cooperate to take care of their children, and work, but she never shares any feelings about him. It’s never expressed that there is an issue between them, but then why is his name never shared with us? Most importantly, the wife of the writer makes efforts to connect with the narrator, which the narrator ignores. The narrator only changes her attitude when she find out the wife is ill. A rather shallow reaction, made worse by the narrator using her daughter’s injury as the explanation/excuse for the ghosting. Most people share themselves to form connections, but do some people share out of guilt? Sharing enough to stay relevant while still distant?
“Intimacy” is my favorite type of story; one that I read over and over to discover more details and motivations, which enriches the story further. I keep thinking that I should be annoyed and disappointed with the narrator but I find her failings makes this character all the more human and believable. This story wonderfully confounds me. But so do most of the people I love. And they might say the same thing about me.
I know that technically, this is a “WINGS” song, but we all know this is all Paul McCartney. Not that it matters, but if I hear this song once it’s in my head for the rest of the week. I can’t prove it, but I bet Paul knew what he was doing when he wrote this.
This past weekend, we took part in our annual tradition of going apple picking! I dusted off my red and black flannel shirt because there was a chill in the air, and I had a need to the great taste of crisp ripe apples!
We started apple picking when the kid was two, and my folks came up to visit us in October 2017. My parents were here to see us, especially to see their granddaughter, and my Ma wanted to experience a New England Autumn. My wife was the one who came up with the idea of apple picking, and it was great Fall activity. It was cool out, slight mist in the air, leaves were changing, and it was something that my parents had never experienced before. Me as well.
After that, on the first of second weekend in October, we head up into the Hudson Valley for an orchard to spend the morning weaving between trees, picking away.
This year, I had been looking forward to this more than anything. Part of it is that Autumn has been late in arriving up here. Seems like two weeks ago, we still had the air conditioners on dealing with several days of 80 degrees. But Fall did arrive, and like magic the leaves started changing, temps cooled, and we even got a little rain. Driving up out of the City, it was rejuvenating to feel that the season had started changing. For me, Summer is oppressive while Autumn is liberating.
This year, as the season was changing, there were other changes too. The apple picking was fine, we all had a good time. But as I looked around the orchard at all of the other families out there with their little kids, I noticed that my daughter was one of the older children out there. I was sort of amazed that there were no teenagers; Like almost none. And the few that were there looked like they wanted to die. I know that apple picking is a cheesy cliche thing to do in Fall, and when I looked over at my kid, who was having a good time, it was apparent that I have a limited time left to do this stuff with her.
Things will change, as they always do. It will be sad when the day comes and she doesn’t want to do this stuff anymore, but it’s also normal for her to get older and not want to do the old things anymore. Maybe she’ll prove me wrong. I know that she’ll still want to apple pies that her mother makes after these outings. That part won’t change.
