Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

Sunbabies

Charlie asks for “sunbabies” at lunch during my first week as the nanny. I don’t know what he means. I am already failing at this job. What are sunbabies? He just repeats it. “Sunbabies.” I look desperately at his four-year-old brother Evan and I ask him what Charlie means. Evan shrugs. Then I beg Evan for help. With exaggerated patience, he asks his two-year-old brother what sunbabies are. Giving up on us and taking matters into his own tiny, chubby hands, Charlie walks to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of strawberries. “Sunbabies,” he declares. Of course they are. 

Elizabeth Gatten Fenley is a nanny, her source of levity, love, and writing material. Elizabeth shares her joyfully empty nest with six delightfully boisterous dogs.

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