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Once upon a time, there was once a woman who lived in a very small apartment with her husband.  She used to be very much in love with her husband.  He wooed her at first with all of the usual mannerisms to marry someone desirable.  He promised her the moon, and provided very little.  But love blinded her reality.  She loved him as a man, not as a provider.  At first it didn’t matter.  Making love in a small room was heaven.  The thrill of having a loved one by her side at every moment felt like destiny’s ecstasy.  But after a year that togetherness became a burden.  Her husband began to bring a few friends over to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol.  His weekends didn’t include her any more.  She began to feel neglected.  So she would go to department stores to fantasize about what she could buy for the apartment, hoping that would take her mind off of her lost fairy-tale life.

Before the small apartment became bombarded with smelling, sweaty men, she would imagine their little apartment with a nice bed with perfect draperies hanging in the kitchen window.  She would imagine her husband would walk through the door with flowers.  She would imagine their perfect children playing and the sun shining through the window spilling its brightness throughout the whole apartment.  Then she envisioned moving to a home where all of her visits to the department store would come to light.

However those dreams didn’t seem to come to fruition.  She had to clean up again after her husband’s friends.  One day she came home to find the door off its hinges.  She felt like screaming.  She wondered what and how could this have happened.  Her husband’s two drunken friends were attempting to put the door back on its hinges.  She left.  She couldn’t bear to see her once loving handsome husband in such a state.

She went back to the department store.  Browsing always made her feel empowered.  The items she imagined buying were things her and her husband could do together, like watching television or listening to a new CD.  Sometimes she looked at tablecloths because she would envision eating a delicious meal at the table with a new embroidered cloth on the table.  They would talk about how perhaps they could take a trip somewhere.  How she would have loved that–sitting on a beach soaking up the sunrays.

One day the woman went to a department store and saw an item on sale.  The woman seemed to have
found exactly what she was looking for.  She quickly walked away to the cash register.  A young man with a long black hair, wearing a black leather jacket, was looking at an unusual piano/motor vehicle contraption.  The piano actually was like a keyboard in which different sounds came out of it like the sounds of horns, drums, and other instruments. His customers observed the demonstration and showed
great enthusiasm for it.  Within a few more minutes, the man rode the contraption out of the store with his customers riding along.

What a sight, she thought, to see someone so happy with something they purchased.  She could only
dream.  She walked out to view the man and his customers’ excitement.  They seemed to be oblivious to the world.  So was she.  She just kept walking down the street, walking, walking.

Her husband and his friend were back at the apartment.  By now, the apartment had been missing a woman’s touch.  A pool table was where the bed had been, beer cans all over and the sink full of dishes with roaches climbing about.  The stench was so bad that the windows remained opened all day and night.  She hadn’t come back after that day and he didn’t seem to care.  His only responsibility was for his child.  She had forgotten or didn’t remember having a baby boy.  He was always a quiet child.  He played in his crib.  She used to sing to him all of the time.  But now he sat in his own waste, his father always stoned and/or drunk.

One day the man’s father came by to visit and noticed what a state of filth they were living in.  He cleaned the small place and dumped the pool table at a junkyard.  Within a day the small apartment was transformed.  The baby was cleaned again and resting peacefully in his crib.  The grandfather couldn’t imagine what had happened.  He was surprised to hear that his daughter-in-law left without saying a word to any family members.  His son didn’t seem to care.

The baby boy had little life to him.  His skin was without color and he didn’t move much.  The grandfather had to do something to care for his son and his grandson.

Within a month the baby boy seemed to be doing better, but he loved to be hand-fed by his grandfather.

A year passed and the growing boy still liked to be hand-fed.  He would not lift his hands to grasp a spoon or fork.  He babbled instead of talking.  But his grandfather loved him dearly.  He bathed him, cooked
for him, and told him stories.  It seems that the boy’s father started to behave the same way.  He, too, became depended on hand-feeding as well as bathed.  The grandfather read stories to both father and boy.

Twenty-five years passed.  The grandfather was old and bearded because there had been little time to take care of himself.  His hands became rough from constant cleaning.  Sometimes, the grandfather could be found at the local hardware store–imagining the tools he would like to buy to improve the apartment where he now lived.  He often saw other fathers and sons shopping together.  He could see the delight in the eyes of other fathers and sons as they shop for tools and made home improvement plans –what he used to do with his son.  As he walks out of the store, a woman ran into him.  They looked at each other and they both recognize or thought they might have known each other, but neither said a word.  As he walked home, he soon forgot about the encounter with the woman.

Back at home, the father and grandson were waiting for him.  He freshened up and went to the kitchen to
prepare dinner.  Father and grandson open their mouths and held their heads way back as if they were small birds awaiting worms from the mother.