It might have been high summer, the tiny daises and violet weeds speckling the lawn, or one of those perfect warm autumn days, every fallen leaf in perfect contrast to the green grass below. We were still in the strangely blurred phase of long days and longer nights and milestones measured in months. I know for sure that the sun bright, and that I was acutely aware of our small yard, vibrant with growth and change as my little girl toddled down the uneven concrete front path with her hand tucked in someone else’s. She was happy, going to the park, and did not look back.
The sun shone, we were away in a beautiful place filled with happy family memories. The eggs had been hidden and found. I was planning our lunch when I heard the tremulous call from the bedroom:
“She said, “If people are going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born.
I sat on the floor and held her tightly to keep my own spirit from draining through the soles of my feet. I don’t know what other mothers say at such moments; … But my children have never been people I could lie to. My best revenge against all the dishonesty and hatred in the world, it seems to me, will be to raise right up through the middle of it these honest and loving children.”
In the fresh bloom of the pre-school years, I agreed to become a member of the Board. The school was everything early education should be: they played music, hatched butterflies, went on small expeditions, little hands in little hands, a long caterpillar of wee ones in boots and coats undulating slowly along, noticing every leaf and stone.
She was applying false eyelashes to my lids. Despite my best efforts to tip my head back and stop them from falling, tears were slipping from the corners of my eyes. But she was a professional; the stiff dark fringes stayed in place. I peeked under them at my daughter standing in the center of the white room, styled and made up, poised in front of the camera like an antelope, alert, wide-eyed, somewhat out of her element.
We were driving on a two-lane coastal highway after having dinner at a burger place in town. Hoping to savour one of the last lingering summertime evenings before school’s inflexible arrival we skipped dessert at the restaurant because we wanted to go back and make a fire to roast marshmallows for s’mores.
She was the sunny cherry tomato to my shy string bean. She drew pictures, I wrote stories. We found the same things funny, but she delivered the punchline and I was the fall guy. We were a secret club of two, both of us in terrible glasses and kitchen haircuts. We were each other’s safe place throughout elementary school and beyond.
One sleepless night during my third trimester as dawn crept slowly over the mountain I was facing a chilling truth: I going to have a baby. Worse, one day I was going to have a teenager.
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