Tiny Love Stories: ‘I Wrote Immediately and Effusively’

Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words. My baby is sandwiched between her grandpas: a Brooklyn-born Jew and a Vietnamese immigrant, each planting an exuberant kiss on her chubby cheeks. We practiced “L’Shana tova” for the Jewish New Year and “Chuc mung nam moi” for Lunar New Year, and over the years the loudly articulated, slightly unintelligible greetings became a shared way of showing affection as my children grew.

— Oanh Ngo Usadi I manifested my partner, listing what I really wanted: a masculine lesbian into musicals. Her profile read, “Listening to ‘Yentl.’” I wrote immediately and effusively, even referencing the song “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” and asked her to a gay bar’s show-tune singalong.

She wrote back, “Love your exuberance,” and later would say: “Never too much. Never enough.” — Bree Coven We knew each other casually through our social groups and had both lost our spouses the previous year.

modern love, reader-submitted, 100 words, brooklyn-born, vietnamese immigrant, l'shana tova, chuc mung, yentl, show-tune, masculine lesbian