All Adither

Bright again

You hear your kids playing in the backyard

with the neighbors

whooping, shrieking

exercising the small measure of independence

you allow

You think maybe you should be out there

coaching, watching, laughing along

But you've had enough

You tell yourself this is good for them

Playground law

The day you came back from the midwest

you painted the pink streak back into your hair

It had faded

But is bright again

When your husband saw it, he said

"I thought you were done with all that."

"No," you said. "Nope. Not even close.

Why would you think I was?"

You're reading Olive Kitteridge

It makes you sad

But also has lines like

"She had the sensation that she'd been seen,

and she had not even known she'd felt invisible"

So you keep going, of course

Because the book contains so many truths

The author gifted with the amazing ability

to convey people's deepest fears and desires

You wish you could write like that

You went out with both of your best friends 

Saturday night

You felt lucky

So lucky

to have found these two women

who let you talk about anything

who let you spew terrible thoughts

and listen

really listen

Moving through the warm July evening

a little wine in your veins

you realized that Going Out isn't

always what you imagine

You remember this

from days when you were single

The emptiness at the end

The money spent

The drinks consumed

For the last year, you'd been imagining

it as something else

Something more fulfilling

But your two girls...they are fabulous

You're down about your writing

low

blue

Sighing a lot. Wishing.

Trying new spins on old words

Wondering when

When?

When...

A confounding green

The first part of this story, Greener Grass, can be found in my right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

A child's voice said, "Daddy?"

Dave was lost in Megan's lips, his hands buried in her hair. But Megan vaulted away and yanked her shirt straight.

"Hey, Eli," she said, trying to sound soothing but coming across, instead, as shaky.

Eli looked at her warily. If he were Joshua, he would just ask why she'd been kissing daddy. But Eli only sidled toward the wall, where he clung to a door frame, eyes downcast. He wore cotton dinosaur pajamas with a hole in one knee.

Megan glanced at Dave, her own eyes wide. Then she crouched next to Eli. "Hey, buddy. Can't you sleep?"

He shook his head.

"Did you count the stars on your ceiling like we talked about?"

He nodded.

"Are you scared of something?" She swiped a chunk of smooth, dark hair away from her face.

Dave went to the fridge and grabbed a beer from the case he'd bought on the way home from work. "We talked about this Eli," he said. "You just have to lie there quietly and you'll conk out."

Neither Megan nor Eli responded, so Dave shrugged and sat down at the table.

Eli said, "I'm scared of fires." He still couldn't pronounce his R's, so fires came out as fi-ahs. Dave thought it was the cutest damn thing.

"Let's go tuck you in again," Megan said, standing and taking his hand. Over her shoulder, as she walked away with Eli, she looked at Dave. Her expression was flat. Maybe a little disappointed around the eyes.

When she'd settled everything and Eli was once again in bed, presumably counting the glow-in-the-dark stars Tamara had once-upon-a-time stuck over his bed, she passed back through the dining room where she grabbed her iPod and bag. At the front door, Dave stopped her, knowing he had beer on his breath, knowing he must be coming across as a lecherous old man.

"You okay?" he asked.

A shoulder jerked up and she wound one finger through a belt loop. "Yeah, I guess. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, after, you know, what happened."

"What do you mean 'what happened'?"

Dave looked at her quizzically. Was she going to play denial? He raised his eyebrows and pointed to her, then to him and back again. "You know...I kissed you."

"No, you didn't." Her chin ticked upward.

"Ah, Megan. I think I did."

She was looking right at him as she scoffed and said, "In your dreams." She turned and left, her sixteen-year-old ass swaying the tiniest bit, her headphones going over her ears, one hand sliding into her pocket.

What the hell? Dave thought, cocking his head and polishing off the beer. What the freaking hell?

Family Misc.

We're back, finally, from our Michigan trip. Which was two weeks long. Enough time to immerse ourselves in our extended family's life, but not so much (hopefully) that people tired of us and started muttering that they wished we'd go.

Traveling with the kids was a relative breeze, compared to how it used to be. The hardest thing by far, about taking them places, is getting home. The part where I want to collapse on the couch and go through mail and eat and then fall asleep.

That's not possible, of course, because there are little ones to feed and to calm and to put to bed.

***

I left Harbor Springs with a lump in my throat. I felt like a snake that'd swallowed an egg as we drove toward the airport. Not that I want to live there again. I don't. I adore Seattle, where people don't wear coral pants dotted with tiny lobsters while taking themselves completely seriously, where I can put colored streaks in my hair without suffering many double takes from passersby and where there are always new alleys and doorways to discover.

But I do miss my parents and my sister. That part about being here is hard and, I imagine, always will be.

***

Kitty Cat's appointment with a gastroenterologist is tomorrow. I feel a little like a dead man walking. As in, I'm quite sure the specialist will instruct us that it's time to go gluten free. Which also means that our lives could drastically change in 24 hours.

I made chocolate chip pancakes this morning. I'll do cookies, brownies, cake...whatever she wants tonight.

I'm trying not to think about it too much, because if I do, my stomach will start cramping and my breath will come far too fast.

***

I've been ruminating a lot about marriage. What's good about it. What's not. How well I fit into the institution. How I can be sweet and appreciative and, within the same day, turn sulky and bitter. How tension often seems to be present and how confusing it is to know if this is something inherent in the dynamic between J. and I, or if it's something that I, alone, perceive. Maybe even generate.

Going to Michigan is always its own lesson in marriage. My mom and dad have been married 42 years. I watch them a lot, listen to them, try to figure out what makes it work. My mom often tells stories about the rockier first years, about how they stuck with it, about how wonderful it is now, like a creamy dessert after a particularly dry and chewy first few courses.

Yeah, yeah, I say. I know. I know. No one said it'd be easy.

***

My dad used to be into photography. He had a Nikon SLR and his own darkroom, where he sometimes let me help dip thick paper into shallow trays of chemicals and watch images emerge.

Here's a shot of me he took when I was about Kitty Cat's age (four).

It hung on the wall for a long time during my childhood. Then it was replaced by cows. But different versions of it float around my parents' house. I brought this one back with me. (My mom knitted that sweater.)

And now here I am, all jaded and pink haired and married and knitting, too, and developing my own interest in photography and pining and writing and getting ready to go to Chicago for a blogger's conference and drinking lots of coffee (albeit, decaf) and wine and wishing I could just let things be.

Locker room

I took Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat to the community pool in my hometown (where we're staying for two weeks). The pool is new since I lived here, but it's connected to my old high school.

After swimming and splashing around for a while, we went in the locker room to change.

I didn't really expect to see anything familiar. The whole structure, I thought, was original.

I was startled to recognize these:

So many unhappy teenage hours spent here. (Back then, I wouldn't have been surprised to find fire or poisonous gas shooting out of these spouts).

The same showers we used for PE. The same basic locker room footprint and the dreaded door to my PE teacher's office. The office where her favorites would congregate after class.

Needless to say, I was not a favorite. I hated PE. I wrung my hands over it. I worried about my lack of coordination. I hated getting slapped in the gut with a rubber ball thrown hard by a particular brutish girl. I detested that my teacher couldn't do most of the ridiculous physical tasks she set us to.

I hated it and I vowed that if a PE teacher ever concocted cruel games or forced my children to twist their bodies into shapes (while the entire ninth grade watched) that humiliated them, I would step in.

I'm going to keep my word.

A desirous Green

The first part of this story, Greener Grass, can be found in my right sidebar, under I Like To Write.

*****

The hallway light clicked off and Dave glanced up from his computer.

Megan appeared in the doorway of the den. "I think they're all asleep," she said. "Eli took some extra time. He was worried about a Harvester?"

The movie Cars. He had to remember to hide that damn DVD. "Thanks, Megan," he said. "I really appreciate your staying extra hours today. This pump station..." he let his voice trail. A girl Megan's age didn't want to hear about his boring work. Hell, he couldn't even get his own wife interested in most of it. "Sorry," he said, shaking his head.

"It's okay," she said. "I like your kids. They're sweet."

"No, I mean, I'm sorry about starting in on my job. Like you care, right?" he chuckled.

The sun was low in the sky now, but still bright enough that he hadn't had to turn on lights. An orange glow burned through the den's two west-facing windows (an architectural flaw, in his opinion--why not put one window on the north wall to catch some of the midday rays?).

Megan said, quietly, "I care."

With those two words, Dave's entire blood supply sunk to his groin and he felt dizzy. He gripped the edge of his desk. I care. Hadn't that been all he'd ever wanted to hear from Tamara? That she cared? And here he was, getting it from this girl. This girl with amazing breasts and a super flat stomach and a perfect ass. A girl so springy and young he could've bounced flower petals off her.

He pressed his palms to his cheeks, rough from not having shaved in two days, and managed to say, "Your money's on the kitchen counter."

"Thanks, Mr. Marks," she said and turned.

Mr. Marks. Jesus.

Her formal salutation allowed him to focus his eyes again, to let go of the desk, his brain to stabilize.

He still thought he should go out there, draw out the conversation, let the house darken around them as they talked, offer her a beer. Illegal. Illegal. All of what he was thinking was illegal. And wrong. But, fuck, he wanted to do it. He wanted her company a little longer.

He heard a zipper, the chime of her cell phone.

Standing, he went into the hallway, then pivoted and strode back to his desk. Close the door, he told himself. Close the mother-fucking door and sit down at your screen. Your boring, asshole of a screen, and get back to the pump station. Answer some emails. Initiate a game of Mafia Wars if you have to. Just, stay where you are.

Something dropped in the kitchen, clattering to the floor and scuttling across aging ash boards.

That was all Dave needed. He burst from the den and found Megan still in the kitchen, of course, on her hands and knees, peering under the refrigerator.

"I just knocked my iPod under there," she said.

He got down and looked too. He could smell her shampoo again. He cleared his throat hard, willing himself to stay focused.

"Jeez," he said, noting how disgusting and dusty it was under there, feeling faintly embarrassed and annoyed at Tamara. "I don't see it anywhere." He grabbed the broom and reached it along the sides of the hulking fridge. "We're gonna have to move it out," he said.

"Oh," Megan said. "It's okay. I can get it next time I come over." She leaned against the counter, looking a little stricken.

Dave flung out the word, "No!" Then, immediately, followed with, "No worries. It's on these felt pads that make it easy to pull away from the wall."

After a few minutes of tugging and cursing, the felt pads not working as well as the package claimed they would, he had the refrigerator yanked back and a pink iPod in his hand. He blew lint from its screen and said, "I hope it still works."

"It will," Megan said, jamming it into her bag. "It's been through worse."

"Don't you want to...test it or something?" Dave asked.

"Nah, it's fine."

Straightening, he said, "What kinds of songs are you kids listening to these days?" He sounded like he was seventy-two. You kids? Christ.

She shrugged, lowered her eyes, then looked at a Matisse print on the wall. It was Tamara's. Something left over from a house she'd lived in in college. "My favorite playlist right now is, like, Moby and Chemical Brothers and Cibo Matto. But they're totally old school."

Dave laughed and said, "No, old school is Van Halen and ZZ Top. Stuff I used to listen to."

"You don't anymore?"

He grabbed a Sprite out of the cockeyed refrigerator and offered her one which, to his surprise, she accepted. "No, thankfully. On my way to work, it's Talk, mostly. Talk radio. Which is sad. God, you know, I used to be so into music." It was true. Maybe he hadn't had the best taste in the world, but he loved what he loved and he didn't know how that passion had drifted away.

She sat down on a stool, her bag still slung over her shoulder, her body hunched slightly inward. She slurped from her can and quietly belched. She probably thought she was doing a good deed, keeping the lonely, old dude company.

"You don't have to stay," he said. "You can take your Sprite on the road. I mean, you're welcome to stay as long as you want. But don't feel like it's a requirement for employment."

"You want to hear a song?" she asked, retrieving her iPod again and plugging massive black headphones into its jack.

He took them and listened, liking the thumping beat, knowing it was nothing he'd choose on his own, but appreciating her taste nonetheless. "Wow," he said.

"Good, huh? It makes me feel like I can get about a million things done."

It made Dave want to smoke a joint and have sex, but he wouldn't,  of course, say this. As he handed her iPod back, his hand grazed her denim-clad thigh. It was warm and taut and he didn't think he'd meant to do it, but her leg felt outrageously good under the pads of his fingers.

He concentrated on his pop. What spewed from his mouth next both startled him and filled him with a bizarre, misplaced pride. "Do you have a boyfriend, Megan?"

"Uh uh," she said. "For a while I did, but..."

"Didn't work out?"

"No, he...I'm pretty sure he was gay."

Dave guffawed and, in the midst of his laughter, caught the nape of Megan's neck and turned her head so she was forced to look him in the face. "Don't ever settle," he said. "For gay, or anything else. Anything that doesn't feel 100% right and nurturing and sexy and wonderful."

Her brown eyes warmed (liked, he thought, just baked chocolate brownies). She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and in an instant, Dave was nudging those lips with his own, trying to tease her into relaxing. She made a small mewling sound in the back of her throat and this spurred him. He was on his knees, kissing her gently at first and then, as she relented, going in farther, scratching her face all to shit with his whiskers, he was sure. And he was sorry. But not very.

He tried to think of the rainbows and unicorns and prom pictures that probably decorated her room, the stuffed bunny she maybe slept with, the way she hugged her mom goodnight before bed, but he couldn't conjure the teenage fantasy again. She kissed like someone twice her age and Dave was sucked in. Sucked like a flailing cricket down a drainpipe.

DirtGrassSizzle

We flew out to Michigan on Tuesday--Fruit Bat, Kitty Cat and I. We cruised uneventfully over cumulus formations that rose up into the sky like small, cloud cities. 

It was the easiest trip I've taken with them yet, letting me believe we can be a real traveling family someday, that I won't have to suffer the clench in my gut each time a jaunt approaches.

I like being here, in the place where I grew up. Especially in summer when the breezes are warm and the bay sparkles and the grass is aggressively green.

Our awayness, too, allows J. to work around the clock rather than knocking off after 12 to 14 hours of briefs and conference calls and document review. (Not that I'm allowing myself to resent his work. Too Much. On a good day.)

I've watched bees trying to pollinate my mom's floral deck cushions. I've run my fingers through a pile of deer fur left along a trail behind my parents' house. I've listened intently to the hollow, flutey coo of mourning doves and the constant chirp of crickets.

I've watched the kids frolic in the garden with their grandpa, getting horrifyingly, wonderfully filthy.

I've enjoyed our first few days and am looking forward to another week and a half, hoping for some fireflies and beach time and sizzling, orange sparklers.

MS seeks AGT

Sexy, quiet, genuine, quirky, occasionally funny and sometimes meandering manuscript seeks agent with strong convictions who is not afraid to take risks.

Or... supportive publisher that appreciates creative turns of phrase and satisfying story line for long term relationship.

Deal breakers are over-interest in appealing to mass market and no sense of adventure.

Inquire within.

An untitled post

The tip of my grandpa's finger was gone. He lost it, I think, in a lawn mower. A tall, handsome, imposing man, he was missing other things too. The ability to convey his emotions, for one. He was the most stoic, least communicative guy I've ever known.

Though I loved him, I don't know how my grandma stood him.

My dad, thankfully, has lived down his father's legacy. And I think he would not like my telling you this, but he, my dad, becomes more effusive with each passing year. He leaves absolutely no room for doubt that he loves my sister and I, loves and values time with our kids too.

He's one of those people everyone likes. Fair. Kind. Confident. Funny. Humble.

And, I get to be his oldest daughter. Me.

I marvel at my good luck.

Sentimental

I'm not a person who generally mourns her children passing from one stage to the next. I welcome new phases and ages.

Tomorrow is Fruit Bat's last day of Kindergarten. On his first day, back in September, I did find myself the slightest bit weepy. But I didn't expect much emotion to come at the end.

Then, tonight, I pulled these from his backpack. 

The box of crayons he's used (and used and used) all year. 

And my throat closed in on itself.

Esther

The first fiction piece I ever had published was a short-short. A sliver of a story that ran in Phoebe. Since then, I've written mostly regular short stories (more than 500 words) and, you know, novel-length manuscripts that remain destitute and homeless.

Lately, though, I've been rediscovering the beauty of the short-short.

Here's one I wrote today:

Esther had long, red hair that was thick and shiny. She had a straight, freckled nose and milky skin and dark brown eyes as big as walnuts. She had a small waist and hips that flared just enough, but not too much, under her cut-offs. 

Her hands, however, were asymmetrical. She had only one thumb.

The other had been lost to the engine of her green pick-up truck eight years before. It was a stupid mistake–involving a flywheel–she should've known better than to make.

Rick stared at her right hand that lay on the seat between them. "God almighty," he said. "That hurt?"

"What?"

"That...missing thumb? Do you get them phantom pains you sometimes hear about?"

"Nah," she said, shifting into third gear, liking the clouds of dust she could see in her rearview mirror. "Not after the first few months."

Rick propped his elbow in the open window. His jeans were filthy from working calves all day, cutting off their balls, at a ranch a few miles back.

He asked, "Can you...I bet you can't give a decent hand job with no thumb."

She smacked his chest and yelled, "That's what the other hand is for, you retard. Do you want a ride or not? Because if you do, you best shut the heck up."

This was her first time meeting Rick and she was driving him between the cattle ranch and her dad's dairy farm as a favor. But she would've been happy to kick him into the rye fields, watching him throw his hat to the ground and seeing his lips form around long curses.

He said, "So, when'd you do it? When you were a kid?"

"I was sixteen." It happened long enough ago to prevent her from forming any illusions that she was beautiful or perfect.

"Shit," he said. It came out like shee-it.

"It's okay," she said. "Keeps me humble."

Up ahead, a cow stood in the road, just hung out there, looking straight ahead.

Esther hit the brakes. She and Rick hopped out of the truck and tried to prod the cow forward. But the cow wouldn't look at them, wouldn't budge.

"C'mon, you bitch," Rick said, pushing one shoulder against her haunches.

She lowed–a long and mournful sound.

"Leave her," Esther said. "I'll drive around."

"The hell you will. You'll get stuck. Besides, it's the principle. She needs to git."

Esther went to get back in the cab, but Rick grabbed her left arm, his fingers pressing white half moons into her skin.

Her thumbless hand grabbed his and tried to pry him away. She couldn't get a grip. 

He laughed at how her small, pale stump wiggled.

She kneed him in the groin, thinking, there, how do you like that you calf castrator. 

He doubled over.

Esther slid behind the giant steering wheel and tore an arc around the cow, startling her, finally, into movement.

She didn't wait around to watch the cow meander off toward the horizon, though. She sped away, smirking at the sight of Rick, still hunched over in the middle of the road.

My boy

Another tooth...gone.

Kindergarten...almost over.

Empathy...maybe, possibly developing.

Reading...melts my heart into puddles.

Beatboxing...getting good.

Hiking...loves it more than anything...takes after his dad.

My oldest kid...lucky mom.

That old place again

Yesterday I was in this amazing place. And by place, I mean an open emotional dwelling where I saw dandelions as flowers and crows as intelligent birds and my children as funny, lovely little creatures and the world as a wonderful thing.

First of all: our garbage collector. He waited for me. 

It was morning and the sun was shining and I was taking some trash to the street where our can already was. Not so much because the plastic QFC bag (knotted neatly) needed to be whisked from our house right that instant, but more so I could feel the warmth on my arms and listen to the robins.

And as our automatic garage door opened, I saw him. Our garbage collector. He stood there, halfway down our driveway, with one arm outstretched. His truck idled nearby.

I handed him my bag. And, for some reason, this tiny exchange touched me.

Then later, right after we dropped Fruit Bat at school and Kitty Cat and I were getting into our car, another mom came over and hunched, scanned the dirt around our tires. "I'm looking for something," she said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A little black rocket thing. I don't think it's even here. But I promised my son..."

I laughed. I'd done many similar duties. Performing small favors that are mostly senseless to us adults, but vitally important to our kids. I felt, in that moment, kinship.

And several hours after that, driving with two small girls, the three of us singing in unison, "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee" as a salty sea wind blew through our open windows.

But we had a rough night, with both kids getting up and my insomnia flaring its ugly nostrils. I'm tired today. I'm quiet and only slightly observant.

I'm nervous about the impending summer and our loss of routine and that J. is going to keep working 70+ hour weeks through August. 

A little unsettled again, hoping tomorrow brings more peace.

A sweltering green

If you'd like to read the beginning of this story, Greener Grass, it can be found in my right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

It was one of those Wisconsin summer days when the temperature hovered around ninety and the humidity hit 100 percent.  It was one of those Wisconsin summer days when Craig couldn't motivate himself to sit in front of his sticky keyboard at the kitchen table or prod the kids off the couch. It was one of those days when he wished Jacquelyn would just take some time off, already and stay home with the family.

But she was in St. Louis at a trade show, in an air conditioned convention center wearing her suit and heels. 

And he was trying to entertain the kids and get three posts up by five pm.

He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window toward Angel's house. Her car, oddly, was still parked in the driveway. Her back door was open to the yard, though. If he stared long enough, he figured he might catch her in shorts and flip flops, watering plants or sitting on a lawn chair with her face pointed to the sun.

He found himself thinking about her more, now that Tamara was gone, wondering who she was, really. Imagining her naked. Constructing elaborate fantasies in which they were thrown together somehow (Electrical storm? Flood? Bat loose in her house and an extreme fear of flying rodents? Desperate need for a cup of sugar?)

And he tried to figure out what she saw when she looked at him. If she looked at him. Boring stay-at-home dad with two rug rats and wife who didn't like him enough to hang around? Or, caring man who loved his children and was married to a heartless woman only concerned with her career?

Did she notice his burgeoning belly under his t-shirts? Did she see the retaining wall he'd put out front that spring and recognize how thoughtfully the rocks had been placed? How carefully he'd leveled it all?

Then, there she was, standing in her doorway, holding a bowl and lifting a spoon to her mouth. She wore a flowy white skirt and a bikini top and Craig lost his breath for a moment. Why wasn't she working? Was she home sick? But sick women didn't look like that, like an ad for Special K.

He jumped up and slammed his laptop shut. He shoved his feet into his Tevas and was just about to jog across their yards and talk to her about...something. The heat, or the new traffic circles on the next street over or Tamara, when Jessica wandered into the kitchen asking for a popsicle and a trip to the pool.

"In a while," Craig barked.

"Noooo," she whined. "I'm hot."

"Well, then, get yourself an Otter Pop and we'll go to the pool in a half hour." He could always sit off to the side and work while the kids splashed around.

The Otter Pop suggestion shut her up and she rummaged through the freezer while Craig took off.

Angel, however, had disappeared and shut her door.

"Shit," he said, slowing as he reached the property line. He had nothing important enough to say to knock on her door. Which, somehow, was more intrusive than going up to her while she stood half outside. "Shit."

He spun around, went back in, and ate three grape popsicles while packing up towels, goggles, swimsuits and his computer. Off to the fucking pool, he thought, as he loaded the kids up in the car. The thrilling, fucking pool.

*****

When Jacquelyn called that night, something she didn't do every evening, but just often enough to convey that she sort of cared what the family was up to, the conversation went as smoothly as spreading mortar over glass shards.

Each exchange caught Craig and Jacquelyn on its sharp edges. They had to backtrack, go around it, try an equally unsuccessful path.

Her voice was gravely with exhaustion. Yet, Craig felt no sympathy for her. She was in St. Louis, basically partying it up. He was in Milwaukee, as usual, taking care of their two kids.

"I can't get into this now," she was saying. "I only get five hours sleep tonight and then I have to be up."

"All I'm asking is when your flight comes in on Wednesday," he said.

"Well, but I have to look it up and my Blackberry's not on and I'm freaking tired, Craig. Do you have any idea what my day was like?"

He pictured her in her hotel room, heels off, feet propped on an upholstered chair. Her make up and bra would be gone. Her short, dark hair would be tucked behind her ears and the bags that had started swelling, in the last few years, under her eyes, would be pronounced.

Thinking of her that way, sleepy and vulnerable at the end of the day, should've filled him with some sort of affection. Should've, at least, spurred a sense of compassion. But it didn't. All he felt was annoyance. He wanted to punch her, actually.

"How would I have any idea what your day was like?" he said. "I've been here. In Wisconsin. Trying to keep our kids from getting heat stroke."

"Thank you, Saint Craig," she said.

"You wouldn't even care if we left them with a nanny, I know. But I do. Mack did a dive today. For the first time."

There was a moment of silence, then her voice softened. "They went swimming?"

"Yeah," he said. "And they did great. Both of them."

He could almost see her straightening up, snapping herself out of her mom-interest.

She said, "I'll email you the itinerary tomorrow."  But her words, this time, wavered. 

They weren't glutted with tears. But they hinted at a weeping jag that might be let loose after they hung up, or, more likely, whisked away and replaced with the deep sleep into which Jacquelyn always seemed able to fall.

Field trip

I chaperoned a field trip today. It was fun and tiring and dull and interesting.

Fruit Bat and his friend held hands as we walked. And, of course, I wondered, how much longer two little boys will feel comfortable doing this?

Not much.

But the moment. The moment I had today, watching them trek unselfconsciously up the path. I think I'll remember it forever.

Fire starter

Your daughter is most afraid of fire right now.

Will this start a fire? she asks, about most everything. If I touch this doll to that chair, will it start a fire?

She's trying to figure it out. She's mixed up on her spontaneous combustion.

So you try to explain. No, a spoon against a rug will not cause flames to leap forth. No, not the book on the dresser either.

Maybe a hot stovetop or an electrical outlet or a mother who simmers on medium-low.

But none of the other things. 

She fears fire like you fear disease. Like you fear loss of control. Like you fear invisibility.

And her list of concerns will grow throughout her life. They'll morph and fade and rear up again.

For now, though, it's just fire.