Flipped

She’s flipped, they said, when Lindsay stopped cleaning the house, let the kids run wild, let her husband go without, well, anything. Flipped. Turned the world upside-down and sideways and not making any sense.

She’s flipped, they said. And her kids looked happier than they’d ever been, skipping barefoot on the grass, in and out of sprinklers that ran and danced on the lawn at the wrong time of day and night.

She’s flipped, they said. And her husband looked lost and his clothes went unironed and he had to buy his lunch each day and never knew what or who he’d come home to each night.

She’s flipped, they said. And she looked happier and younger than they’d ever seen her and she went braless and shoeless and careless and free.

She’s flipped they said. And they watched with envy and heard laughter and music and stories and love tumble out of the windows and onto the street and almost flip their ideas and their judgements and their scorn.

But still they held strong to their prejudice. Held tight to their upright, uptight values. Held firm in their lie that they were doing the right thing.

She’d flipped, they said. But they couldn’t look each other in the eye any more. Couldn’t face her pale, shadowy kids or her insubstantial husband.

Everything they’d been sure of had flipped.