The Computer

     The front knob turned slowly because she was thinking.  What should she do first?  Feed the cat?  He meowed plaintively at the top of the stairs.  Have lunch herself?  Her stomach growled.  No.  The soft melodies of Sirens were floating up the stairs from the den.  Like Ulysses, she couldn't resist.  She turned to go downstairs and dropped the groceries on the landing along with her purse.  Did her cell phone inside need charging?  Was there an unheard message on it?  The love/hate battle began.  Technology always won either way and she ran quickly down the stairs to the computer.

     She had always disliked this room-her husband's domain.  Rows of books on every subject piled high in no order on shelves thick with dust.  Refusing to clean here, she had stayed upstairs in the kitchen and played her favorite opera CDs on a K-Mart special.   But he had bought this computer ten years ago which he kept on his desk.

     She couldn't go near it and was almost afraid of it.  What if she pressed the wrong button?  Would the lights go out? Would the windows crack?  Would smoke and steam come rolling out from the nest of wires hooked to it?  But she felt left behind and saw her techno friends marching toward the horizon while she limped to catch up with them.  Even her seven-year-old was attached to an i-pod when she drove her somewhere.  Black cords dangled from her ears and she smiled sweetly at the sound of songs that Grandma couldn't hear. 

     The computer screen called soundlessly, fish swimming back and forth across its surface.  A screen-saver, they called it.  There were so many words--spam, icon, delete, enter, search, web site.  It was a web for certain, a tangled mass of threads that caught you and pulled you in.  And here she was, sitting at the desk, reaching for, of all things, a mouse.