"Parallel Universe" by Lynne E Williams

 – 20/20 hindsight and all that platitudinal crap

In that universe, I wiped away the tear before it dried at the edge of her eyelash.

Emerging author Lynne E Williams is a native New Englander who lives in Charlotte, N.C.
with her two cats, two dogs, two teenaged sons and their father. Lynne is a graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., where she double majored in Music and Theater instead of English but was nevertheless named a Writing Fellow of the University. She is a member of the Charlotte Writer’s Club and Charlotte Lit, and a two-time finalist in CWC’s nonfiction contest. Her story “The Power Drill” was included in the fall 2022 PSPP anthology Twists and Turns.

Author’s Talk

Lynne E Williams

We do the best we can with what we have to work with, and that’s all anyone can ask of us. Wise words, full of grace. So easy to apply to other people, yet so difficult to acknowledge for ourselves. 

“Parallel Universe” was, I suppose, my attempt to process a pivotal “now or never” moment in my life. A period of fraught hours during which I made decisions that haunted me for a long time with an agonizing barrage of “what ifs” and “if onlys.” The shame and guilt over not having been there for my mother compounded my grief in ways I can’t imagine she ever would have wanted it to. 

Writing this story the way I did allowed me to step outside the situation, to view my circumstances from a kinder, gentler, perspective. By exploring an alternate version of events, I was finally able to forgive the new mother I had just become when my own mother died. Exhausted, overwhelmed, and still recovering from a life-threatening illness, that version of me did the best she could with what she had to work with in the moment. 

That’s really all we can ask, especially of ourselves.—Lynne E Williams