After moving into half double domestic
step-

life, a dispatch from the nearest shore
of my recent bachelor past

bobbed like a bottled message:
A chinese menu tri-folded into the door

like a throwing star. The wide-eyed
seven-year-old blonde buzz-saw

found it first–like sunken treasure or
my stash of wintergreen Tic-Tac’s. For

Bunny, the ink jet printer fed paper
menu was a map of the exotic. Ornate

figures danced in order rows and
framed stock pictures. Sharpied

above the Great China Restaurant
name was the mantra: “We delivery.”

In a house of full cupboards and
bulging veggie crispers, we knew

the answer was no before she or
I could ask.

But the nights her
mom taught class, we knew we’d

never get to the leftover St. Seraphim
soup. It was Sweet and Sour chicken

with white rice–maybe some
chicken on a stick for good measure.

We cracked our fortunes from
We Delivery; Didn’t need to

read mine. Bunny snuggled against
me wrapped in a quilt like a blonde eggroll.

The bed is a cloud, and I am afraid
to step off into the cold otherworld,
to take her with me into the vaporous after.

I nestle in backwards, pose fetal and pull
her into the cocoon of comforter,
to the bulge of hot breast,
back to the body. I rest
and bide and tend.

Spring shows in white spurts
through the yellowing curtains,
dust stars diving into her breath-stream,
man in green-smelling work boots,
red splash of tulips in his fist
and a new hazel rimming
her muddled eyes like a moss.

I swaddle us both
and plummet

out to a concrete porch, facing the street.
I see an old friend pass
in a pickup, a case of beer clinking in his bed.

Goodbye, I say to him and the shadow-dappled
homes standing casually still
as if no earthquake occurred,
goodbye to infant grass fingering snow.

I breathe the rust of the screen door
as it closes me in shadow, and squeeze
my new flesh, so long in the making.

Chloey was flying my model airplanes again.  But that’s okay.  They’re Styrofoam.  When the wings fall off, or the nose pancakes, you use extra glue.  We stood at the top of the hill.  In front of us, a downward slope of dirt and grass gave the airplanes more room to crash.  I threw:  she crashed.  My watch counted the seconds before the next mad death spiral.  Longest so far, ten seconds.  I watched her face.  I wondered whether she enjoyed crashing.  Her lips contorted, suggesting concentration, not pleasure.  Maybe you can’t teach a five year old these things.

A flash of white foam zinged past my head.  I ducked late; felt the sting.  “Ouch,” I said, cupping my ear.  “Sorry,” Chloey said.  “Can we go home now?”

 

Chloey, who colored all over the couch?

Oh…I don’t know…but I forgot to remind you, we need more paper.

 

She wanted to help wash the car.  The one that still had the new car smell and the plastic wrap on the door sills.    We rubbed bubbles of soap deep into shiny blue paint.  I showed her the “top down” method:  wash the top first, bottom last, avoiding scratches.  She rubbed the wheels.  Then she sprayed the car with the hose.  Then sprayed the house with the hose.  Then the dog.

“Okay, time for wax,” I said.

Grabbing the hose, I shot a mist of water on her face, making her giggle.  Next, I dipped my finger in the wax and drew looping circles on the car door.

“Clouds,” I said.

She smiled, then drew a bird on the hood.

“It’s going to poop on your car,” she said, breaking into laughter.

“Funny,” I said.

I stepped back and threw little gobs of wax onto the hood under the bird.

“Poop,” I said.

She laughed harder.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

I rubbed the wax into the car until white turned to blue again.  When I looked up, Chloey was holding a rock over her shoulder-a big one that tilted her body to one side.

“I’ll get the bird,” she said, and threw the rock onto the hood.

 

Look Dad, I found your keys in my cash register!

You found my keys in your cash register?

Yeah, you should have put them in a safer spot.

We had this big deal at work.  I was asked to bring a visual aid.  Something tangible.  Show the client how our networking products would make their company grow.  So I bought a board from Office Depot and all these magnets, which I made stickers for, to show information flow, and how the company was supposed to benefit from these little magnets moving faster than before.  Two days before the presentation, I tucked the board away in the office closet.

The next day, I found Chloey upstairs in the office.  She had the scissors.  The board was broken into impossibly small pieces.  Magnets and bits of board floated in little puddles of water on the carpet.  Her ponies were lined up, ready to walk across the water on my magnets.  I shouted.

“It’s an optical course,” she squealed.

“A what?”

“Opticals!” she said.

I took the ponies and put them in a garbage bag in the garage.  I asked her how it feels to have something you care about taken away.  She cried and ran into the bathroom and shut the door.

Beethoven was death, you know.

Oh yeah?  What does that mean?

You know…dead.  Died.  Dead.  You’d know these things if you knew more about Beethoven.

You never think your kid’s going to get sick.  I mean, not really sick, especially when you’re an adult and you’ve been healthy all your life.  And your wife’s always been healthy.

The nurse called the day after Chloey went in for a checkup-shots, blood, the usual stuff.  My wife took the call.  I remember her face.  It was like a physical stain of anxiety and pain.  Chloey needed “tests” for something “troubling in her blood.”  What was it?  The possibilities were disturbing.  They wouldn’t give us specifics now.  We drove Chloey to the hospital.  We told her it was a quick trip, and there’d be ice cream later.  We joked with her through all the waiting, tried to keep her smiling.  But I think she sensed it-your kids learn to read you.

They kept her overnight.  We took shifts.  Driving home and back to the hospital.  The roads were empty and every light was green.

The doctor came in the next morning with a chart.  I couldn’t decipher his face.  But I knew what it meant when he led us to a different room.

“In all likelihood your daughter is going to be okay,” he said.  “We’ve ruled out the more serious possibilities.”  He paused and flipped pages.

“It’s CPS deficiency,” he said.  “We’ll monitor it closely and she’ll do fine.”

He explained:  Carbamyl Phosphate Synthetase Deficiency. I couldn’t even pronounce it.  Something about the urea cycle.  Too much protein was bad.  Too little was bad too.  There were red flags to watch for.  Pills.  Ongoing evaluation.  And more questions than answers.

Driving home, Chloey colored.  My wife wanted to have a conversation about Carbamyl Phosphate Synthetase Deficiency.  But there were few words.  We exchanged looks.  It wasn’t in our vocabulary.            I carried Chloey into the living room.  She saw all her ponies out of the garage and lined up on the coffee table.  I’d bought more magnets.  She clapped wildly.

A is for ABC

This is the alphabet puzzle your grandmother gave me when I was a boy. I do not remember when I got it; it was always mine. This alphabet puzzle has never belonged to anyone else, until this moment, which you will not remember.

You have woken up looking into a bright light, seeing nothing but the light. Soon, forms will begin to define themselves against the light.

The letter “A” is a crossed, open, upside-down triangle, the head of a horned bull. The A is red, the perfect red of an apple on television. It is what I see in my mind when I think of the color red.

 

B is for Blood

One of my strongest childhood memories is when I stapled my thumb on purpose. A wonderful, awful little shock-one purple drop there after I pulled out the staple, before my father saw and seized me, and held my hand under the hot water, then squeezed it dry in a hand towel.

Thereafter, I am told, my parents often came upon me with something dangerous in my hand that they had hidden away: scissors, a nail.

B is blue.

 

C is for Cecelia

Cecelia is your mother’s name, but you won’t use it much, because, for you, she is your mother, not herself.

A few hours before you were born, in the hospital, as we were waiting for the doctor to come down the hall with the pain medicine, your mother squeezed my hand harder than I knew she could, and she clenched her eyes closed and could not keep herself from moaning, from crying, from screaming. My reaction was not only terror and sympathy, but also a kind of helpless joy as I bent to kiss her wet forehead. This is like what I feel when you are screaming and I bend to collect you up.

C is white and a little gnawed on.

 

D is for Donkey

You prefer not the turtle I bought for your first birthday, not the giant plush white teddy bear from your mother’s work friends, not the tiger you screamed for at the zoo gift shop, but the half-faced donkey with the stiff limbs discovered by my brother on his recent search of our parents’ attic for his baseball cards.

D has been missing as long as I can remember. I do not know what color it is, but it must still exist somewhere. Buried deep inside the cream-colored couch I once puked on? Jammed beneath a radiator in my parents’ house? Accidentally thrown away and so now in the Nashoba Valley Landfill, thirty feet down?
 
E is for Eat

Sometimes nothing will work. Not pretzels, barbeque potato chips, yogurt covered raisins, chocolate milk, mommy’s special walnuts, applesauce, peas and butter, a candy cane I found in the junk drawer, sleeve cheese, string cheese, peanut butter, saltines, wheat thins, bread, corn. Only animal crackers. What you want is out of my hands. What you want is out of your hands.

E is yellow striped with blue.

 

F is for F

I had trouble with the letter “F.” I would skip over it in the song; I would point at it and say “E.”

F is purple with yellow lines.

“F” you say, as sure of yourself as you are when you point at the moon and say “there’s the moon.”

As I carry you sometimes I feel that the sidewalk is one thin inch of ice over a black lake.

 

G is for Galoshes

I have an ongoing argument with your mother about the word “galoshes.” I called them galoshes once, getting you dressed, and she said “Since when do you call boots ‘galoshes’?” It’s true-I have never in my life called boots ‘galoshes’ but now I do always, without thinking.

“Galoshes” is a wonderful word to say. These days I find much more pleasure in dressing to go out into the rain than I once did, even if I am alone. Leaving work for lunch-out into the black but wet and shining parking lot.

G is green.

 

H is for Han Solo

Of my old action figures dug out from the attic by my brother and presented to me-to you-Han Solo was my favorite. He was the hero in my imagined adventures-he climbed the rumpled-blanket mountain, sought magic weapons in the darkness beneath the bed.

I think I still have an active imagination, but I imagine now in terms of still images, not quests. For example, here, a redwood forest in mist, quiet and dim and green-you have just let go of my hand.

A golden elevator.

Your mother in a doorway in her long black concert dress, her oboe with the silver keys.

A white church in snow.

I sink my hand into a cold river and silver minnows shiver in and out of my spread fingers.

The letter “H,” thick and orange, the size of a man, hovering there, just above traffic.

H is orange.

 

I is for Itsy Bitsy Spider

I is unpainted, the only one. It is the color of thin yellow wood, the tree that all the letters have been cut from.

Every so often I wake up in the middle of the night and hear you singing to yourself in the dark. There is no way to know how long you have been singing.

 

J is for Juice

We were in line at the bank-I had to deposit a check before the mortgage payment came out the next day. It was almost five, the end of a long day, getting dark, wet out, the two of us in line at the end of a long day, in our wet raincoats, in the hot bank. You wanted juice. “We have to wait,” I said.

There you are on your back, out of your mind, making demon angels in the muddy footprints. Everyone pretending not to notice. I have to pick you up and sing.

Banks are so strange. Bulletproof glass, chained pens, slips of paper, numbers.

J is red with thin orange lines.

 

K is for Kookaburra, Koala, Kangaroo

A box of flashcards. On one side of each card a simple drawing of an animal and, on the other, the name of the animal in thick black letters and, in smaller letters, a few interesting facts. It is good to know the names of animals. I feel this strongly, weirdly strongly, because what use is such knowledge to most of us? I know what whales eat. I know the size of an ostrich’s egg.

K is yellow.

 

L is for Lucky

L is half of what it was-when I was an older kid with a new Swiss Army knife, looking for things to saw with the tiny saw, I sawed it in half. Why I only put half back in the L-slot I do not know. The half-L is black.

It is lucky I chose the L to saw, because when you saw off half of a letter “L,” it is still a letter “L.”

 

M is for Mine

That’s my swing, my bucket, my sand. That’s my cup of milk, my truck, my pretzel stick, my cat, my fossil-rock, my paper-towel-tube. That’s my shoe, my lizard, my key, my crayon, my book. That’s my way to sing that song. That’s my window, my moon. That’s my hat. That’s my dad.

M is green with white dots.

 

N is for No

All your “yeses” are tentative and non-binding, barely words.

If you know you want something, you do not say so–you act. If you want the sqooshed-dried out mouse carcass we discovered under the carpet, you pick it up. If you want the bright-red ketchup-smeared torn-up 7-11 hot dog box on the sidewalk, you let go of my hand and reach.

Only the negative requires earnest verbal expression, a full-throated attempt at communication. Then, I can almost see the word “No” flying out of your mouth, fully formed, a blue stone.

N is blue.

 

O is for O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem was always my favorite Christmas carol and it is strangely upsetting to me that it is not one of the songs that sticks in your mind, that you ask for. You don’t even have enough of the words enough to garble them back to me.

I remember Christmas Eve, the packed church, standing with my brother in the side aisle to let others sit, standing beneath the stained glass that was dark in the dark. My jacket stuffed into a ball and jammed between the wall and my hip. It was hot, and there were candles. I did not believe in any of it, even then, but I did like the songs.

You know Silent Night so well because your mother sings it to you as a lullaby and always has, even that first week in July, your first week here, firecrackers and police sirens outside your window as you slept.

O is orange, but it has been traced over and over again in blue ballpoint pen by someone who is not me–I don’t remember doing it–and not you–you have not quite mastered the circle.

 

P is for Paris

Your mother has been to Paris; I have seen the photographs and you will, too-there she is in a black tank top imitating the pose of a white statue, there she is leaning on a railing that holds her back from falling down into the sky.

There she is, arm around the waist of another beautiful young girl, this one with a pierced eyebrow, who is now a teacher in Washington D.C. (I think) who I have never met.

Your mother was once more or less fluent in French, but she has lost most of it.

The P is purple.

 

Q is for Quiet

The Q is strange-the bar that breaks the circle is a simple white, but the rest of the circle is a complicated yellow and green pattern of lines and triangles-like fronts on a weather map. Someone somewhere decided that this is what a Q looks like.

Before you were born, quiet was silence. Now quiet is the radio static of the monitor, which your mother and I found we could not sleep without and so now leave on, even though it receives no information from the receiver, which is turned off, unplugged, in a drawer.

When the power goes out in a storm we are awakened not by thunder or wind or rain-or your cries, since storms do not make you cry-but by a hollow of a silence in the storm, the thick silence of the world.

The flash of lightening, the thunder, the wind; the rain is not a wave but a number of individual mosquitoes of water just too heavy to fly.

 

R is for Red

R is red. You always attempt to fit the R back into the puzzle backwards.

Red is the color of your raincoat, the only red item of clothing that you own-your mother claims she does not dislike red, but she dislikes red. I bought the rain coat for you on impulse on a home-from-work stop at Wal-Mart for diapers for you and peanuts, which your mother cannot live without.

I would have said that I did not much care about color. But these days I find I believe red to be an excellent color for raincoats. I also like yellow cars and handwriting in green ballpoint pen. I like to look at pumpkins, and algae blooms on ponds. I like black dresses with flower prints. I like this pale-orange-striped tie I discovered at the bottom of a drawer and now wear with some frequency.

 

S is for Summer

In the summertime, we try to spend as much time outside as we can. We are limited in some ways: by our jobs, by your nervous reluctance to sleep anywhere but your own bed, by our home in the core of an American half-city, by our lack of true pioneer hearts. Your mother and I are payers of a mortgage, holders of jobs, carers for your grandmother (who does not always forget your name, which means something).

We are what the pioneers were walking into the woods to get away from.

How much you love the tall grass in the meadows of the part of the state park that is not far from the highway. There the grass is tall enough that you can walk through it and into it at once.

You cling to my knees in the grocery store, you demand to be picked up when crossing the street. In the tall grass, you just go.

S was in its slot when I gave you the puzzle, but now it is gone. It is purple.

 

T is for Tree

I was a climber of trees. A camping trip in college was the last time. Not that I made a conscious decision, or even thought about it before now. Somehow the scale was wrong. There is something correct about being a small person with sap on your fingers so high in the air, yet with green branches everywhere beneath you.

Once, I refused a lunch command and sat up there for an hour, alone, so high I rocked in the breeze. I only came down when my mother threatened to not drive me to baseball practice.

T is pale blue.

 

U is for Umbrella

U is black, the same color as our umbrella that terrifies you. I could never have guessed you would fear an ordinary umbrella-for you, sirens are interesting, barking dogs are puzzling, your scolding father is ridiculous. But the umbrella opens and is a the black open mouth of a monstrous spider, its spokes long grasping silver tentacles.

The choice is to carry the open umbrella in one hand and, in the other arm, you screaming and thrashing, your head buried in my chest, or to leave the umbrella in the corner folded in on itself, a seed, and lead you by the hand bareheaded into the rain.

 

V is for Viv

Viv is the name of the nurse who helped your mother through the early part of your birth. As we were waiting for you in the hospital, after the doctor gave your mother the medicine for the pain, she closed her eyes and asked for quiet, which she does not do. I could not even pay attention to a newspaper, as I can always do. I looked around the room. I studied at scuff marks on the wall. I read the serial numbers on the heartbeat-reading machine. I counted the blades of the window shade. I felt empty. I tried to imagine you but could not. Viv came in now and then. She adjusted your mother’s pillows, fiddled with the machines. She was wearing white white sneakers and silver glasses that she had to tip her head down to read over. Just before she left the room, every time, she always took a second to touch your mother’s shoulder and say “You’re doing fine.”

I found the word “Viv” in my mind. The letters hung there. The sound of her name over and over in my mind, a sort of silent buzzing. I wondered if “Viv” was your name; it is not.

At a certain point, Viv was gone, and we had a new nurse whose name I do not remember. Then you were born.

V is the same red as the A.

 

W is for Willie

Willie DeMasso was the name of a friend of mine in elementary school. We lived three backyards apart, so we could dash behind the houses into each others’ yards whenever we wanted (if Molly the German Shepard was inside).

We were friends, and then he went away to a different middle school, got leukemia and died.

I don’t think my mind understands that he is dead. Somehow childhood lasts forever. Like the way I sometimes dream I am a child. I am with Willie in the pale orange and brown light of the autumn woods behind his house, hammering sticks into scraps of two-by-four that we found in his basement. We are building something that will never be built. I can taste the nail held between my lips; the head of the hammer is warm.

You might remember today.

W is white and one of its arms is half sawed-through.

 

X is for Xylophone

I used to feel sorry for X because it never got to be the first letter of any word other than Xylophone (X-ray and X-marks-the-spot did not count). Though I did not admit it, this feeling was the reason I asked for a xylophone for Christmas in the 3^rd grade.

X is green with red lines. It is shaped in such a way that it has no up or down, left or right. It is the easiest piece of the puzzle to fit home.

 

Y is for Yellow

Y is brown. Y should be yellow. B is blue. G is green. O is orange. R is red. W is white. But Y is brown.

 

Z is for Zero

Z is the striped yellow and black of the pencil-long garter snake we saw on the way to the playground today. It was resting on the edge of the grass and the paved path leading in from the sidewalk in a patch of sunlight. I spotted it first and considered avoiding it, unsure if you would be afraid. But then I held your hand and held you back from the swings and slide and crouched and held you and said “Look.” And you saw, and did not turn away, and I could not see your face. And you took a step toward the creature and held out your hand and the snake felt you and came to life, to its motion, its awful at once tight and unfurling slither, like it was drawing itself. It slipped away into the darkness of the grass.

I remember the Emily Dickinson poem about a snake from high school because I understood it. She looks at a snake and feels “zero at the bone,” an animal terror. The “Z” in “zero” hisses.

You turned up to me with your hand still open and out and said “I saw a snake.” Not afraid.

“I did, too,” I said.

“The yellow snake!” you said.

Then to the playground. You have not learned to swing on your own, though you are almost there. You kick your legs in and out as I push you, not quite in rhythm.

 

Dear child. There is no heaven.

 

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Mermaids.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Mel and her friend Kaylie are sunning away their innocence, their legs lined up and waiting behind them. Mel reaches back and adjusts the bottom of her American flag one-piece, which, we discovered this morning, is too small. She’d cried and said it was a baby suit anyway and why couldn’t we go shopping? I promised we would go soon, but that there just hadn’t been enough time. There is never enough time. Kaylie is wearing a pink bikini with a padded top that makes her look sixteen instead of twelve. They had been at the beach for an hour before Mel finally took off her cover-up; I want to tell her that there will always be something to hide.

I reach into the cooler for another hard lemonade. The bottle is sweating and I pour it into a plastic cup and drink it down before it gets warm.

I squint out at the water, searching for mermaids. When Mel was younger we would stare at the ocean for hours trying to spot one. We’d practice our mermaid, swimming out past the waves, our legs held firmly together and smacking down hard into the sea, backs caving in and out of the water.  The theory was that if we could perfect it, if we could move just like them and prove ourselves worthy, they would make themselves seen. We would swim with them and we would belong. One day, after a long session, Mel had said, “Mermaids rescue people. Maybe they don’t come to us because we aren’t in trouble.” I had told her that everyone is in trouble in some way and that maybe we just needed to try harder, that we could lift ourselves higher, that we could be more graceful.

Mel’s father used to watch us from the shore; he grew up on a farm in Iowa and never learned to swim. After a while he stopped watching us and started watching the girls on the beach. Now I imagine him back in Iowa watching the swim of cornfields, but I don’t know where he is for sure. After he left Mel stopped believing in mermaids.

The girls have turned onto their backs, offering their tiny glistening chests up to the sun. Kaylie has one knee slightly bent, which flatters her stomach. That she knows this instinctively is what makes the girls circle around her. Mel is the girl whose body has fallen behind, who tries too hard and whose laugh comes out wrong. Whose dark curls can’t be tamed and whose bathing suit is too baby and too small. I know how this will go-one day soon Kaylie will close the circle and Mel will be standing outside of it. By the time they reach high school, Kaylie will walk by Mel in the cafeteria as if they had never spent a day together on the beach. I want to tell Mel that her secrets aren’t safe, that she should give them only to me or keep them inside.

I twist open another lemonade and light a cigarette. Mel notices and props her body up with her elbows, her leg now bent at the knee. “You’re so disgusting,” she says. Her lip is jacked up and she rolls her eyes at me before dropping back on her towel. I think of how easily I could wound her. I could mention co-ed baths with her cousin. I could sing, or bust out some sandy disco moves. I could tell Kaylie in a sweet voice that most people grow into their noses, eventually.

Instead I rub out my cigarette and ask them if they want a sandwich.

“What kind?” Mel asks.

“Peanut butter and jelly,” I say. I take one from the cooler, but the lemonades have crushed it and the middle is now a fresh bruise.  I suddenly want to cry but instead I hold up the sandwich and laugh. The laugh comes out wrong and Mel perks her head.

“My mom gave me money for the snack bar,” Kaylie says. “But thanks so much anyway.” Her voice is cheap bangly bracelets and right then I can see the rest of her life sprawled out in front of her.

I stand up and the sun in my eyes and the shifting sand makes me list. Mel is watching; waiting for the wrong laugh to bubble over and spill out into something darker. Later I know she will accuse me of being drunk, but I only had four lemonades. I won’t be driving for hours and it’s my day off.  I steady my legs and try to stand nonchalant. “Anybody want to go for a swim?” I ask. Mel is digging her toes in the sand and I can see the sweat beading on her face. For a moment I remember her nursing, how she would pull away and my milk would dribble from her lips. She looks at Kaylie, who says, “No thank you, Mrs. Router.” I can tell Mel wants to cool off but she reassumes her position and I am dismissed.

I can feel Mel’s eyes on me as I maneuver around the umbrellas and coolers and towels and make my way toward the water. It is early summer in New England and the water is cold. I wade out to my waist and then dive in. Right away the haziness is gone and I am strong. I dive over the waves until there are no more and then I turn onto my back and float.

When I drop Kaylie off her mother will come to the door in her office clothes, her hair perfectly styled and lipstick recently applied. She will thank me, telling me how grateful she is that I was able to take her daughter for the day because she had an important meeting, or a big presentation to give. I will try to flatten the sea from my hair and I will tell her that Kaylie was no problem. Mel will look at her feet as Kaylie’s mother asks me how my job at the restaurant is going. I will say it’s fine, the tips are fine. But all of us will know she is reminding me that she is more important than I am, that I shouldn’t forget the world works in this way. Mel and I will stop for take-out on the way home. I will suggest a girl’s movie and Mel will watch it with her computer on her lap and I will fall asleep on the couch to the blip of Facebook chat.

I tread water and look out toward the horizon. If only I could get out that far I know I could swim like a mermaid. I know they would come to me and I would belong. We would jump and dive and swim and I would be so graceful. I tighten my legs together and pump the sea. I stretch my arms up over my head and I spin.

After a while I hear a whistle but it is distant and I do not understand it is aimed at me. By the time I realize, people are standing, lined up to see what the lifeguard is so insistent about. He is waving me in; I’ve gone too far to be rescued. I can see the pink of Kaylie’s suit near the edge of the water, but I don’t see Mel. She is embarrassed that I am being called out and has probably fled to the bathroom. I know there will be fall-out and I turn and look back at the horizon. For a moment I think I could do it. Just keep swimming until I’ve gone as far as I can go and then see what happens. But then I picture Mel, standing in a dirty puddle by the sink as she stares into the mirror at her wild ocean-air curls and wishes she had a different life. A different mother. She wouldn’t have worn her shoes and the dirty water would be seeping into her skin.

I turn and breast stroke back toward the beach. I’m planning my speech. “What?” I’ll say and hold up my palms. “I was just swimming! That lifeguard needs to chill, don’t you think?” Mel will laugh a little bit in front of Kaylie to play it cool but her eyes won’t be laughing.

That’s when I see her. The American flag cresting a wave. Her legs are tight together and she is slamming them into the sea. Her hair is streaming perfectly behind her, and she is graceful, and right then I can see her life spread out wide in front of her. I think I can hear her saying, “Wait!” as she swims and spins her way toward me.

If you are the parent of a queer child, you will not be punished for casting them out.
No one will arrest you for the exorcisms or threats; no one will fault your shame.

If you have a god, you may have to wrestle him for peace. You might win.

You can tell yourself that your children will end up in the hell they deserve,
or that it’s just a phase, or that you are willing to help them get better.

But, if it helps to know, many of our parents have chosen to practice the art of loving the way they once did violin, or fishing, or cursive.
If you choose this path, have patience. You will not be good, at first.

Your children may not thank you for the effort.
You may remember: neither did they thank you for changing their diapers.

Practice love like you once held a plastic doll or a paper sack of flour
in anticipation of their arrival.
The seat of your hip. Your elbow, a cradle.
The feel of a fontanel under your fingertips.

We are still your babies.

If you should find yourself crying, screaming red, eyes shut and confused, remember:
this is normal.

Remember their births: how they came crying, screaming red, betrayal on their faces.

Remember what you said:
welcome to this knifepoint asphalt world, sapling.

I am your gardener. These are your roots.
I can’t wait to watch you bloom.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Kim.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

9:00. First, try not to be late for preschool kiss & play drop-off. Even one minute late, you might have to parallel park your minivan, and you’re not so good at that. You might bump into that pole by the edge of the sidewalk again, and your husband will chuckle and shake his head when he notices the growing gray spot on the corner of the back bumper. He’ll kiss your temple and say, “It’s so cute how you just can’t grasp simple geometry concepts,” and you’ll mutter, “I beat you in all our math classes, asshole,” then he’ll look hurt, and you’ll feel guilty and have to make it up to him with a blowjob, which, given your slipped disc, is not such a good idea. Better to just be on time.

9:12. Late by two minutes. Knock on the drop-off door. Wait. Knock louder. Wait. When no one answers, curse (not too loud-children are parrots) and get in the car. Drive past the parallel parking spot on the street and look for a perpendicular parking alternative.

9:15. Park in the AMC lot. Walk your two preschoolers to school. The older one yells, “Look, a red leaf!” as if he’s never seen such a thing before, as if there aren’t bits of dried red leaves all over the kitchen floor from the two red leaf projects on the refrigerator. The younger one says, “No, purple leaf!” It takes eight minutes to walk the two blocks with the kids competing to pick up the most leaves. Remember your yoga chant: breathe, don’t seethe.

9:25. Back in your car. Spend the drive to Whole Foods shaking your head and thinking how preschool is supposed to be three hours, but now you have less than two and a half hours until you have to leave for pick-up. Life is full of lost half-hours. Dwell on this. Really ponder it. Until someone beeps at you to go-the light’s turned green.

9:31. Arrive at Whole Foods. While you’re parking your minivan into a space designed for a Chevy hatchback, remember back to the first time you came here, 2 B.C. You were hurrying home to make dinner for friends, and Whole Foods was on the way. As you paid over $75 for four small pieces of steak, four potatoes and a bag of organic Caesar salad, you wondered what idiots regularly shop here and vowed never to stray from your trusty Costco again. Shake your head and curse your fate for having two children with allergies to, as the allergist put it, “an unusually high number and bizarrely diverse array of foods.”

9:34. Maneuver your cart through the people squeezing melons, chatting to the fish-counter server, spreading three types of sample cheese on complimentary crackers. You do not have time to waste like this, nor would you want to; you are efficient. Pick out the fourteen things in the store that guarantee in writing that they do not contain and have been processed in plants free from dairy, eggs, gluten, tree nuts, soy, shellfish, sesame, strawberries, corn, quinoa, potatoes, and flax.

9:47. Wait at the checkout line. Think how much you hate waiting. Wonder if all this waiting is karmic payback for all the patients who waited in your waiting room with giveaway magazines like Deep River Fishing and Knit in Rainbow Colors! because you were too cheap to pay for Time and Entertainment Weekly, even with the professional discount. Wonder if there is a Karma magazine. Wonder if people who believe in karma-Hindus? Buddhists? Canadians?-read magazines.

9:51. Still waiting.

9:52. Consider moving to the “10 Items or Less” lane. Study the checkout guy’s face and try to decide whether he’s the type to actually count the number of items and, if so, what he’s likely to do in the event of an infraction: A) ignore, B) wink in a flirty I’ll-keep-your-secret type of way, C) roll his eyes and give you a you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-yourself look, D) refuse to process your eleventh through fourteenth items, or E) send you back to the regular lane. Probably E.

9:55. Look away! Quickly! The “10 Items or Less” checkout guy has noticed your staring and is looking back with a yeah-I’d-do-you grin. Your heart thuds in your neck. You’d better stay put.

9:56. Progress: there is enough space on the checkout counter for you to place your items. Notice two women who are room moms at your kids’ preschool standing by the “Try Our New Organic Coffee!” sign. They are sipping their complimentary cups of coffee, chatting and giggling. They are what you call the “coiffed women”-blow-dried hair, makeup (makeup! Before 10 in the morning!), outfits, cute shoes with heels (heels!). Obviously, they are not industrious like you. You haven’t even showered; your hair is clipped into a bun, and you have on the same medical school sweats with built-in thermal underwear you put on every morning. Comfortable and quick, that’s what’s important in life. Roll your eyes at them and look away.

9:57. Wonder why the coiffed women didn’t wave to you. Wonder if they were talking about you. Probably they were laughing at your clothes.

10:01. Detour through the coffee section on your way out. As you pass the coiffed women, stretch your lips into a both-rows-of-teeth-showing, cheek-muscles-aching smile, and say hi in a casual tone with a hint of surprise, as if you’ve just noticed them. Their unison “Oh, hi” sounds like a duet of coloratura sopranos greeting a long-lost sister in a Verdi opera. Think how much you hate opera.

One of them says, “We were just talking about the new AMC by the school. They started a 9:30 showing for a,” she draws quotes in the air, “‘Moms’ Morning Out.'”

The other says, “Isn’t that great? We should all go after drop-off.”

Think: Yes-fantabulous. If my kids could eat normal food and I could microwave canned Elmo Spaghetti-Os for lunch, I would love to watch movies and buy cute shoes and take a fucking shower instead of searching for organic, non-allergenic food and making every fucking meal and school snack from fucking scratch!

Say: “Definitely. Sounds great. Maybe next week.”

10:06. Drive home. Try to speed through the yellow light in front of your old office building. Say “shit!” and slam on the brakes when you notice the police car stopped ahead. Your heart thuds in your palms. Look straight ahead, eyes on the road, not on the patients entering the building. No: don’t stare; don’t try to guess who’s here to see Molly, your former partner. Stare instead at the picture of your kids on your phone screen.

10:07. The kids! Focus on your adorable kids! Do not wonder how many tumors Molly’s caught this morning, how many scripts written, how many lives extended.

10:08. The light’s green. Inch forward, look around the corner, and fix your eyes on the orange awning of the daycare center where Molly’s children are, where yours used to be until the director called you in hysterics, speaking in chopped phrases like a telegram: wrong lunch, anaphylactic shock, EPI-Pen broke, ER. Even now, your heart thuds in your wrists, on the underside of your knees, against your skull. Breathe in. Out. Loosen your grip on the steering wheel and wipe your palms on your sweats, one at a time. Drive slowly down the street you sprinted down that day, praying to the God you didn’t even believe in that you’d do anything, anything, if your son would just be all right. Cross yourself and pray a quick thank-you to the God you’ve since decided you should try to believe in, or at least pray to.

10:14. Listen to the radio. Up the volume when Rickie Lee Jones starts singing about a couple driving to the hospital in labor, like you’ll be in a few months. When she sings, Said he fit an APB, a robbery nearby / Then he go for his wallet / They thought he was going for a gun / And the cops blew Bird away, squeeze your eyes shut and feel hot tears. At the stoplight, imagine you’re Bird’s wife and shout to the imaginary cops that you’ve waited your whole life for happiness and why the fuck did they shoot right when you were there? Wonder if you-that is, Bird’s wife-can ever reclaim this lost life. Drive when the light turns green and feel better about your own life. Until you realize Denise Wiles, your gossipiest neighbor, is in the next car over, pretending she didn’t see you. Turn off the radio. Consider moving.

10:21. Home. Only one and a half hours until you need to leave for preschool pick-up. You need to hurry if you’re going to make ‘spaghetti’ for lunch. (And ‘pizza’ in case your youngest decides today is a Hate-Spaghetti Day.) Remember your mother-in-law saying to you last week, “I never had problems with kids eating. I just told them, I’m not a waitress; this is not a restaurant. If you don’t like it, don’t eat.” Your husband, standing behind her, shook his head and mouthed, “Don’t respond. No, no, no,” so you bit your lip and smiled like a buck-tooth beaver.

Consider calling her. Pace around the kitchen and practice: “It would be irresponsible and unsafe to let them simply not eat. Your grandchildren are severely underweight due to food allergies and metabolic dysfunction, both inherited from Kevin.” (Say this part slowly and loudly.) Say, with just a hint of condescension, “I am a doctor.”

“Was a doctor, you mean,” she would say. She always says this.

Shout, “Fuck off, heinous witch.” Gasp at your language, and scramble to the window to make sure Denise Wiles didn’t overhear this while ‘weeding her garden.’ When you see no one, sigh and chuckle as you imagine your mother-in-law’s shocked face. Close your eyes and mouth “Fuck off, heinous witch,” over and over again like a cheerleading chant, relishing the silent words, rolling them around your tongue and chewing on them like taffy.

Focus! You need to focus! And get cooking! It’s already 10:26!

10:26. Steam a spaghetti squash. In the meantime, make a bowl of gelatin to use as an egg replacer, and mix that with peanut flour and tapioca starch to make the pizza crust. Roll out the dough and spread tomato puree on top. Wonder what you would feed your kids if the fetus kicking your bladder right now turns out to be allergic to peanuts and tomatoes. Stroke your balloon of a belly with both hands, say, “You wouldn’t do that to me now, would you, baby girl?” and giggle.

10:58. The steamer beeps. Back on schedule. Open the steamer lid and put your face at the edge of the steam billowing up. Try to decide whether you feel like a bride behind the veil or a burn victim with gauze over your face. Sigh.

11:00. Cut open the spaghetti squash, and scrape the insides with a fork to tease out the strands of spaghetti. Not too fast-remember the time you were in a hurry and ended up with clumps that didn’t resemble any type of pasta, not even shells or ravioli, and neither of the kids would eat it, and you yelled in a crescendoing voice, “You wanted spaghetti like Elmo, and I made it for you. Do you know how long it took? You will eat every last bite,” and you force-fed them and they gagged and the older one with reflux threw up and it took forty minutes to disinfect the chairs and the hardwood floors with the all-natural, unscented cleaner that, no matter how much you spray, will not get rid of the vomit smell clinging to the floor slats.

11:09. You’re getting good at this. There is a bowl of spaghetti squash that looks almost like real spaghetti. It tastes nothing like pasta, of course, but the kids have never had real spaghetti, so they don’t know. Consider: which is the real spaghetti and which is the fake-the squash strands that resemble pasta strings, or the pasta made to resemble the squash strands?

11:11. Next, the pizza. Grate cauliflower over the pizza dough, letting it flake on top of the sauce, almost like real cheese. No, don’t think of dandruff flakes on your high school lab partner’s red sweater. Think of cheese. There-smile at how the kids will run into the kitchen and clap and jump and chant, “Pi-zza! Pi-zza!” not knowing it tastes nothing like pizza. You’ve learned so much since high school, when you used to burn water. You’d put water on the stove to make ramen or rice-in-a-bag, then read a book waiting for the water to boil, and forget all about the water. The good thing about burning water as opposed to, say, Spaghetti-O’s or Dinty Moore Beef Stew is that you tend to hear the hissing and knocking of the burning empty pot before the smoke alarm goes off and three fire trucks are dispatched. Wonder: are you a natural water-burner who’s learned to cook, or were you a natural chef who hadn’t learned to cook? Is there a difference?

11:28. The ‘cheese pizza’ and the ‘spaghetti’ are ready. You’ve beaten your own record by six minutes. You have a whole 22 minutes to yourself. Think of all the things you could do in 22 minutes: take a nap (no-remember when you did that and the alarm didn’t go off and you were an hour late picking up the kids and they were hysterical, convinced you were dead?), read a book (but you’d probably fall asleep and the whole late-hysteria-death thing would happen), watch TV (what’s on TV at 11:28? Who watches TV at 11:28?). No, you should just get a head start on your post-lunch project: cutting up cauliflower into kernel-sized pieces to make ‘popcorn’ for family movie night.

11:30. Think how the florets you’re cutting off look like tumors. Take a step back, and think how the now-lopsided head of cauliflower looks like the brain you and Molly dissected in medical school. Look at the counter, at the faux pizza and faux spaghetti and faux popcorn. Think how you’re spending all your time trying to make something into something it’s not.

11:31. Put down the knife and look at the clock. You have a whole 19 minutes to yourself. Walk out of the kitchen and into the den. Take out your résumé and look at it. Pick up the phone. Dial the number that you and Molly chose, back when time wasn’t lost, when a cauliflower was a cauliflower.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Johnstone.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

We have a cohort of children-one for every reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, an entire baseball team of kids.

Caleb hates mashed peas, Rhea perks up in the afternoon, Geo is a future astrologist, Jase sucks her pinkies, Ariana is near-sighted, Ty prefers to be alone, Will has a slight lisp, Percy plays with trucks, and Lulu likes anything that sparkles.

But, if I’m being honest, they’re not technically children, or babies, or even fetuses. They are embryos, and they are frozen, but they already feel like our offspring.

Tomorrow we have an appointment with the specialist to discuss the process of transferring one of these zygotes into my uterus.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I should be pregnant right now. In fact, if things had gone right, I’d be delivering the baby in three months. But that’s how we used to think-that things would happen simply because we had planned them out. That was before my IVF procedure gone wrong. Before the internal bleeding, before the emergency surgery, before they had to take our nice fresh embryos and freeze them for later use. Now I have a six-inch vertical scar where a baby bump should be.

I imagine that our embryos look like miniature babies swimming inside ice cubes. In fact, nowadays, I only fill nine squares of our ice tray. Every night before dinner, I plunk four cubes into Jamie’s glass, five in mine. I like to think that our babies are with us at the table, comparing stories from the day.

This is what women undergoing IVF do-we imagine, we fantasize, we develop eye-brow-raising rituals. Of course, I’d never confess this to anyone, not even Jamie. When friends come over, they get luke-warm drinks. I say that we’re out of ice.

 

Tonight, before dinner, Jamie and I sit on the plaid couch in our sun-porch. The April sun sets in slits through our bamboo blinds. I sit up-right, but Jamie lies across the couch, his legs draped over the armrest, his head in my lap, the collar of his work-shirt unbuttoned. I rub his head.

We discuss how lucky we are. I could have bled to death; I could have had a hysterectomy; my eggs could have rejected Jamie’s sperm; the embryos could have died in the petri dish. But I’m alive, healed, with a functioning uterus to boot. Most importantly, though, we have nine babies.

Jamie takes a sip of his iced-tea, then rests it on his stomach. The ice cubes are melting now, turning the brown liquid a soft amber, but I’m reassured that our actual babies are in a temperature-controlled home, protected from liquefying, from evaporating. I envision them in an aquarium-like tank, floating around, safe in their respective ice-blocks. Rhea zooms around in her dice of ice, while Geo drifts lazily.

Jamie closes his eyes when I scratch his scalp. We talk about the embryo transfer, and I list worries that begin with “what if” and end in “miscarriage,” in “birth defect.” Jamie opens his eyes, pulls my face down towards his, and kisses me upside down. The stubble on his chin scratches my nose.

“We have nine tries,” he says. “One of them has to take.”

 

When the porch turns grey, it’s time to prepare dinner.

I pull a bag of broccoli out of the freezer. Our dog prefers it over kibble, so I pour the frozen florets into her dish. We’re out of fresh veggies, and I consider using some of the  broccoli to accompany the cod we’re eating. But I hate how even after cooking frozen veggies, there’s still the faint remains of freezer burn, the after-taste of the other items-like Hot Pockets and breakfast sausages-that had pressed against it in the freezer.

I wonder-Will our sons and daughters be different because they were frozen? Will they have brains that are mushy from thawing? Will they behave less jubilantly than a naturally-conceived child? Will they smell faintly of ground turkey?

 

The next day, we arrive at the doctor’s office grinning but clasping each other’s hands tightly. We talk to the nurse who’s escorting us to the doctor’s office. Her pregnant belly protrudes so much that she can’t button the bottom of her white coat. I must resist the urge to ask her if it’s an IVF baby. This is something else that hopeful IVF mothers do. We believe that if another woman conceived through IVF, our own cycle is more likely to end in pregnancy. Success stories mean more to us than stats.

Jamie asks the nurse where our babies are being stored. “Stored” seems like the wrong word, as if they’re stacked in cardboard boxes, getting dusty at a warehouse. I hadn’t thought about the fact that our little gang is in this very building. I want to visit them the way one might stop by a hospital nursery, peering at them through the glass-chubby kicking legs in blue and pink socks, gummy mouths cooing and screaming.

The nurse pets her belly then points down a hallway with paintings of flowers that resemble vaginas. “The cryo lab is down there.”

“Are the embryos kept in ice-cube trays?” I half-joke.

She laughs and says no; they’re actually in tubes. “Like coffee stirrers,” she says.

“How big are they?” I ask.

“Smaller than a pin head.”

I frown but Jamie’s eyes widen. He whispers, “That’s unbelievable.”

The doctor welcomes us into her office. Her cheekbones are severe. She’s drinking a Diet Coke through a bendy straw. She has feathered bangs and a son who was conceived naturally. I know because I couldn’t stop myself from asking her the last time we were here, when I saw all the framed pictures on her desk of a little boy.

After she explains how we’ll prepare my body through pills and injections, she asks how many embryos we want to transfer.

“One,” I say. “We’ll save the rest for the future, so we can have more children. I just don’t want to have them all at one. I have no desire to be an octo-mom.”

The doctor says that we can’t count on having a plethora of embryos left for the future. Women should feel lucky to have one or two good embryos to transfer.

“Why is that?” Jamie asks. He shifts in his chair, reaches over, places his hand on my knee.

The doctor takes another sip of her Diet Coke and says, “Well, they have to survive the thaw.”

Jamie’s voice is steady, but his cheeks flush red. “What is the survival rate?”

“50/50,”  the doctor says, not looking at us.

I look at Jamie, grip his hand.

Jase and Ty and Lulu and Percy melt in my mind.

“So, hypothetically speaking,” Jamie says. “We have four potential babies.”

“Not necessarily,” the doctor says. The next hurdle, she explains, is that they have to attach to my uterine wall.

“Only about 30 percent of thawed embryos take to the womb,” she says.

Caleb, and Rhea, and Will, and Ariana dissolve into puddles. Only Geo is left.

“But if you transfer two,” the doctor says, “you raise your chances.” She throws her now-empty can into the garbage. “Then again, you could always end up with twins.”

Rhea re-solidifies.

“Well, that’s not the end of the world,” Jamie says, turning towards me. “We could get part of our family out of the way all at once.”

“Yes,” the doctor says, “but you also have to consider that they most likely won’t reach full gestation. All twins, IVF or not, are typically born early.”

The room is quiet. I bite my nails.

“So, you have a decision to make,” the doctor says. “If a couple of embryos survive the thaw, do you want to transfer one or two?”

 

That night, I pull out the ice cube tray to fill our glasses. I can no longer envision the squares as our children, or fetuses, or embryos. They are crystalized water. They are not swimming around; they do not have names; they do not have personalities. We don’t know if any will endure the great defrost, and if they do, we can’t control if any of them will be strong enough to hold on once inside.

I turn the tray over, twist it a bit, and let the frosty contents fall into the sink. I watch lines shoot up the center of the cubes, crevasses forming.

Just as I’m about to leave them to drip and drain, I peer down and examine them closely. Though some of the cubes are dented, most of them are still in tact, still solid. They are not as fragile as I thought.

I pick out the two without cracks and gently slip them into my glass.

 

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Joshi.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

1. I love her the most when I am drinking my morning coffee at work. She is at school. School is over five kilometres away. There are no grubby hands hanging on to the hem of my dress. There are no crayons and lopsided stuffed toys on the table, there is no glass of milk that I have to pour for her first before I can have a few minutes of peace. I do not have to ask her to be careful because Mommy has a hot drink in her hand.

My love for her comes in violent bursts at this time, it sways like mercury through my body, and seeps through my limbs. I miss the softness of her cheeks, the milk moustache on her little face, the way her voice forms a cocoon of white noise in the messy kitchen. I want to drive to school this very minute and pick her up, I want to kiss her in big slurps and spend my entire day playing with her. But when I do get to school, she has forgotten her jumper and her lunch is uneaten and she needs to use the bathroom “right now Mommy’ and then all I really, really want is to escape to work and have coffee by myself. Some days I have biscuits with my coffee too.

2. I want to be the patient and smiling mother, the one that cooks fabulous meals every night, complete with roast vegetables on the side and offers healthy treats as dessert. The one that can sew and darn and has a drawer with extra ribbons and spare buttons, the one that tacks labels on bathers and sun hats. I wake up with good intentions almost every day. But there is no spare drawer, there will perhaps never be one. You snip a button off an old dress and bridge the gaps. Then when you need to wear that old dress, you go a-borrowing again. My life as a mother is a sequence of undarned holes and missing buttons. I run around the house barefoot looking for a needle while she sits on the couch with mismatched socks eating ice-cream. I know that when she reminisces about her childhood in a few years time, she will remember that her Mommy cared enough to go looking even if she did not actually find  anything on some days. I hope that will be enough. Also, ice-cream is a food group too.

3. She does not play by the manual. She sulks when she is tired, she snaps when I correct her, she never cleans her room and she takes forever to finish her tea. She forgets to bring home a note from the teacher. She does not always fill me with giddy delight and warm joy, some days I want to leave her alone in the middle of a tantrum and race down the driveway, I want to take the first bus to the seaside. For what it is worth, when I am on a bus on the other side of town, I wonder if it will magically transport me to a street near her. My love, it flourishes and thrives, when I allow myself to miss her. The mothers’ manual says nothing about that kind of love. Apparently you are supposed to be madly in love with your children all the bloody time but I think the manual lies.

4. Sometimes I threaten her and say that I will give her away to the first stranger that walks past the house. Other days I look at the well mannered kids in the shopping mall, the ones who listen to their mothers and the ones who eat everything on their plate and fall asleep in the car without a whimper and I almost want to swap her for one of those kids – the ones that seem to tick all the boxes, the ones that work. Some days I feel sorry for myself as a mother.

5. All discipline is a form of love. That is what I tell myself after the 17^th timeout and the umpteenth tantrum about wasted food. But when people compliment me on how well mannered she is on play dates and how she always finishes everything on her plate, I laugh and I bite my tongue. I am sorely tempted to tell them of the trouble she gives me at home. ‘It must be someone else’s child that you are talking about,’ I want to say.  Some days I believe that she only does this to me. She is a good child around everyone else. I am not sure whether that is my fault or hers. I think it is hers.

6. I wish she was a baby again. I wish I could take in giant gulps of that baby powder plus milk smell and watch her crawl around the house, her dimpled thighs snug in her romper suit. I wish I didn’t have to deal with the talks on puberty and boys, I wish I did not have to hold my tongue when she messed up long division yet again. I am not ready for her to grow up just yet. Because I am not ready to grow up as a mother just yet.

7. There are things I should have taught her. An appreciation of her culture and where she comes from, the other languages her grandparents speak, how to set the table and how to do your hair in plaits, how to identify the ingredients that go into her grandmother’s special curry. Then I tell myself that it is things like decency and kindness and honesty that matter the most – like the frosting on a cake, you can cover up any crater if there is something good and solid to bind it all together. I tell myself that it won’t matter in a few years time, she will turn out fine – good and wise and funny. These thoughts of the yet-to-be days blur the holes in the present. I am hoping to be redeemed by the future. I do not know if there is any other way to be a mother.

8. I like my mother more now that I have seen what an amazing grandmother she is. I never knew she was that good with kids.

9. That thing about needing a village to raise a child is true. I do not have this luxury and like every other mother in the world, I like to believe that I need to have all the answers and that I need to know my child better than anyone else. So, I google remedies for colds and ways to wash white socks on the internet. I ask for help but only from faceless strangers so that I can still wear my mask of perfection with my friends. Do not be taken in by those tales of mothers that elevate these grubby days to sainthood. Motherhood is mostly a race. Even saints have to keep running.

10. There are days when I want to stay up late and drink a bottle of wine and eat cheesecake for dinner. But instead, I grumble a little and get on with the evening. I cook her a meal while she stands on the dining table singing her times tables, I get her through homework and a bath and I tuck her in with a story. Love is not always convenient or easy. Love does not make you feel great all the time. Love also means that you do not always get to make the easier choices. I think you can only truly learn this lesson once you have a child.

Yet. But. If I was given only one chance to fill my heart with something, it would be my love for her, this is the one bit where there is no second-guessing. On the days I remember this, I completely redeem myself as a mother.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Gelatt.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I am not supposed to say “Make me a sammich, bitch!”
Not even in jest.
Not supposed to say “Baby got Bounce.”

Mothers are not supposed to
flash peace signs
break into spontaneous Douggie
or use the interrogative “Dude?”
the statement “Dude. Seriously.”
or the exclamatory “Duuuuuuuuuude!”

Nowhere in my Book of Manners for Mothers
does it give the reply when my teenager turns to me
asks why:
Anyone would buy scented condoms?
Why there is lube in the .88 cent bin?
Will I take a friend to planned parenthood?
Explain how you know you had an orgasm?

I want to shout “learn it on the streets like I did.”
But the truth is that a sweetly
fumbling boy
taught me love
on a fold out couch
as the rain fell in sheets.
1979,
I was dumb as a rock at the bottom of a muddy pond.

In my reality now:
Scents are for the bored or adventurous, often the same.
Never trust a pregnancy test from the dollar store.
I will happily call a mother but I won’t help a child lie.
And by the way,
Trust me, you’ll know.

I will hold my girl tight
knowing the moment to let go
is preceded by an agonized
“Mom!”
Then
do a little Douggie
as she walks away.