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  "description": "by Sheri Venema  |  Not-so-young love.",
  "path": "/back-seat/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-10T11:45:12.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.short-reads.org",
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    "“Twin A and Twin B”",
    "“The Blue Phone”",
    "“When You Measured the World”",
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  ],
  "textContent": "In the front seat, the driver and her sister keep up a meaningless chat, trying not to overhear but hoping, yes, please, to overhear.\n\nIn the back seat, their eighty-two-year-old mother cuddles and whispers with her new beau as dusk descends. They have all spent the day in Florida’s Everglades, where they kept a watchful eye on crocodiles lurking near the surface of the brackish wetlands.\n\nNow, steering through the softening twilight on the hour-long trip back to Boca Raton, the driver glances in the rearview mirror at her mother and the sweetheart, their gray heads touching.\n\nWidowed for six years, the mother is soon to marry again. She and her eighty-six-year-old fiancé know about the gossip swirling around them, the smirks hiding behind the well-wishes. Friends have issued blunt challenges to the woman, heedless of the hurt their words might cause.\n\n _You’re desecrating your dead husband’s memory._\n\n _A lot of women wouldn’t marry an eighty-six-year-old man._\n\n _Why not just keep it a friendship?_\n\nBut now, in the back seat, they talk about their happiness. And then one word rises above the murmurs.\n\n“Orgasm.”\n\nThe sisters’ conversation skids to a stop, and they share a sideways glance. Their mother said that word.\n\nThe driver keeps her eyes on the darkening highway ahead. She thinks about a Saturday morning when she was fourteen and helping her mother change the sheets.\n\n“What’s a French kiss?” she asked.\n\nBy then the daughter had had her first kiss, a memorable meeting of lips but no more. Probably she had heard the term at school and had some inkling of its fun naughtiness. Now she was pushing, testing to see what her mother, who had told her nothing about the exquisite intimacy of bodies, might share.\n\nHer mother stroked the crease of the sheet, folding it just so over the top of the blanket.\n\n“You don’t need to know that,” she said.\n\n* * *\n\n**Sheri Venema** ’s nonfiction has appeared in  _Pithead Chapel_ , _Emerge Literary Journal_ , _Coal Hill Review_ , _Art in the Time of Covid-19_ (San Fedele Press), and  _Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Grand Rapids_ (Eerdmans Publishing). Her travel writing and feature stories have been published in  _Baltimore Magazine_ and  _The Washington Post_. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and a dog named Raven. Find her on Facebook at facebook.com/sheri.venema.\n\nThis essay is a _Short Reads_ original.\n\n* * *\n\n****Help keep**** _****Short Reads****_****going.****\nBecome a supporting subscriber or make a one-time donation.\n\nShare this essay on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Bluesky\n\nThis issue of __Short Reads__ was 🚗👂edited by Hattie Fletcher; 👵💕👴 fact-checked and proofread by Chad Vogler; 💬 👀 designed by Anna Hall; and 🛣️ 🌅 delivered to our 2,779 subscribers by Stephen Knezovich.\n\n****PS/**** We’re looking for flash nonfiction reprints. See the submission call →\n\n### **From the archive**\n\n\nJun 11, 2025\n“Twin A and Twin B”\nby Brad Snyder | Specks of hope.\n\nJun 12, 2024\n“The Blue Phone”\nby Ghazala Datoo O’Keefe | A private line.\n\nJun 14, 2023\n“When You Measured the World”\nby Robert Erle Barham | A father’s memories.\n\nExplore the entire Short Reads archive.\n\n* * *\n\nWe’re looking for flash nonfiction reprints. Guidelines →",
  "title": "Back Seat",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-10T11:45:13.260Z"
}