{"id":17283,"date":"2020-01-09T10:19:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T15:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=17283"},"modified":"2020-02-14T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T17:38:05","slug":"sudden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/sudden\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 326px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?d=wg20_flipbook_for_issuu.com&amp;pageNumber=82&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Winterguide 2020<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>By Ben Emery<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17351\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"closeup of some unlit candles and just a lit candle after blowing out the cake, filtered\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction-350x350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/WG20-suddenfiction.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span class=\"s1\">M<\/span><span class=\"s1\">y father, a lobsterman like me, died on his birthday. So did his father, and his grandfather before him. All different days on the calendar, different ages, and different ways of kickin\u2019 the bucket. My mother called it a family curse, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t go tragically or nothin\u2019.\u201d Still, it\u2019s weird, right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">My family didn\u2019t reveal our dark little secret until the week before my twenty-fourth birthday. Ever since, I schedule a doctor\u2019s appointment a month ahead of the big day\u2014January 31\u2014and then a second a week ahead, just to be sure. My wife thinks I\u2019m crazy, but truth told, she gets fidgety once winter\u2019s full-blown. She blames it on all the snow and ice, but I don\u2019t buy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">As the day grows close, my Martha shows all the signs. She\u2019ll fuss about the house and the yard. She\u2019ll curse the mailman for leaving the box open after he takes off, but she won\u2019t let me lift a finger. She takes it out on the dog, the cat, on one of our kids if they come around. They always stop by the house the colder the days get\u2014even if it means seeing the wrong side of the old lady. Since I\u2019m on the edge of vanishing, Martha makes sure I get my picture taken with our lil\u2019 cunnins more. And if they don\u2019t make it over to say goodbye before my ominous day, they call early. They, too, blame it on the weather, but I don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Spooky. That\u2019s what the boys at the pier call it. Every year on the eve of You Know What, as long as it\u2019s a day we\u2019re haulin\u2019 in Casco Bay, they bring out a case of the good stuff\u2014none of that Lite trash\u2014and give me a royal toast. We ain\u2019t much for sentiment, and they like to play it up as a joke, but I don\u2019t buy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Well, I\u2019ve had those appointments with the doctor, and he says everything looks good. The ticker is what they really like to keep an eye on. It\u2019s thumpin\u2019 along just fine, they say. He\u2019s a science man, Dr. Goodrich, so he doesn\u2019t believe much in my so-called family curse, but he seems intrigued anyway. One of the nurses at the office always calls our house a day or two after my birthday. They say it\u2019s to follow up on some paperwork, but I don\u2019t buy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Tomorrow\u2019s my birthday. If I make it through till midnight I\u2019ll have beaten my old man, the current record holder, at 71 years and one day old. Martha, the kids, the guys at the pier, and Dr. Goodrich always point out how at ease I seem near my birthday, and I always say the same thing. It\u2019s not so bad having so many people fretting over you. I\u2019ll be missing you all if tomorrow\u2019s the day. But I\u2019ve gotta say, it\u2019s pretty sweet knowing you\u2019ll be missing me back. That, I\u2019ll buy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winterguide 2020 fiction by Ben Emery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[651,652],"class_list":["post-17283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-ben-emery","tag-sudden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17283"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17501,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17283\/revisions\/17501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}