Susan Pfeffer: Life As We Knew It

Supper in the microwave. The most beautiful words I’ve ever written.

We still have three bags of food in the pantry, but I can tell Mom’s nervous about tomorrow. It’s like the electricity. It comes and goes but you can’t count on it.

Still, even if the food’s that way, we can make sure Jon’s strong and well fed and that will give Mom peace.

My birthday.

I’m 17 and I’m alive and we have food.

Mr. Danworth himself showed up this morning with 10 bags of food.

“We know you’re owed more, but this’ll have to do,” he said. “See you next Monday with your regular four bags.”

There was so much and it was all so wonderful. Powdered milk. Cranberry juice. Three cans of tuna fish. Well, I could write it all down, but it doesn’t matter. It was food and it will get us through for weeks and there’ll be more food to come.

Because it was my birthday, Mom let me decide what we were going to have. I found a box of macaroni and cheese. It was as close to pizza as I could get.

There’s still so much we don’t know. We can only hope Dad and Lisa and baby Rachel are alive. Grandma, too. Sammi and Dan and all the other people we knew who left here. The flu was all over the U.S., probably all over the world. We were lucky to survive that; most people weren’t.

The electricity comes and goes, so we don’t know when we’ll be able to depend on it. We have firewood for a while yet, and Matt is getting stronger (he walked up 10 stairs today and only Mom’s insistence kept him from climbing them all). There’s plenty of snow outside, so we’re okay for water. The sky is still gray, though, and even though the temperature’s been above zero for a week now, 20 degrees still feels balmy.

But today isn’t a day to worry about the future. Whatever will happen will happen. Today is a day to celebrate. Tomorrow there will be more daylight than night. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and find my mother and my brothers by my side. All still alive. All still loving me.

A while ago Jonny asked me why I was still keeping a journal, who I was writing it for. I’ve asked myself that a lot, especially in the really bad times.

Sometimes I’ve thought I’m keeping it for people 200 years from now, so they can see what our lives were like.

Sometimes I’ve thought I’m keeping it for that day when people no longer exist but butterflies can read.

But today, when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I’m keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.