Little Victories - a Column by Matthew Lafleur

Serena Lawrence hired me as a columnist for Bionews Services. I badgered my friend Frankie, who writes the column “Fighting FA,” into recommending me. She gave my name to Serena, who walked me through the onboarding process. I was touched by…

My phone alerted me to a text message. “Would you be devastated if we canceled this week?” It was my friend Will, canceling our weekly appointment yet again. I wasn’t upset, but understood the back-and-forth banter of our friendship. I sent…

“But the bird fly! I want jump off the roof!” My 3-year-old mind believed this totally. I stamped my tiny shoe. I had made up my mind and I was ready to take action.  My mom had discovered some old feather dusters as she…

“The heart really is an amazing machine,” the technician mused in the dim examination room.  I was shirtless on the sterile white bed with seven wires attached to my chest. The wires were connected to a sonogram, which had a screen showing black-and-white images of my…

“I think you got this,” Dr. Landreneau told me.  I didn’t know how to respond, and I was too worn out to, anyway. I graciously sipped through the straw in the cup of water he held for me, and silently accepted the two fun-size bars of…

The day I got my big idea, I received a package in the mail. Other than that, it was an average, unremarkable Tuesday.  Speaking of unremarkable, the package itself was just that — a thin, brown, rectangle of fraying cardboard, about the size of a throw…

My mom took me and my 10-year-old nephew Andrew with her to the movie, probably because we were the only members of our family who wanted to see the 2019 remake of Disney’s “The Lion King.” Andrew wanted to see it because, well,…

“The Zeego Tales” track the wonders of my new life with my service dog, Zeego. “Hurricane Barry” sounded innocent enough — more like a goofy uncle than a scary predator. After making landfall in Louisiana, the hurricane was renamed a tropical storm, which is what reached my…

“I’d give all of my degrees to write as powerfully as Melville,” Dr. Cicardo mused. She had read a passage from “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale“ aloud to her small college class. She reminded me of a proud songbird who recognizes the beauty…

My unease kept growing on the first day of this evening class during my third semester of college. The professor hadn’t shown up yet, so we were a small group of seven or so students sitting around a long table in a small classroom in Griffen Hall, the…