Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's a Boy

Image
Topher's minutes-old fingers were scaly-white and wizened. As I held him for the first time, I marveled at the similarity between those hands and the wrinkled ones of my grandparents, of my great aunts and uncles. I touched the creases. He was my little old man in a hospital room that buzzed with being born. Two days later, on the morning of our departure, I held my son in my lap while The Partner showered in the bathroom. I had given birth on the very same bed, in the very same room, but now it seemed a different place in the sun and the silence. I saw the brightness of Topher's finger flakes and thought again about how old his new parts shone. I cried then, not just with a hormonal surge, but with the pressure of an entire lifetime laid out on a tiny pair of hands. I sobbed so loud and long that The Partner heard me from behind the heavy institutional door. He emerged from the bathroom to ask what I was crying about. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing." Christoph...
Read more

The Secrets We Keep

I don't know why we thought we could keep it from her. She is too smart--too aware --not to attune to the silent dirge within the nation's requiem.We know she knows, but we can't talk about it because of the reverb in our cathedral of lies. "Sometimes I see things in my head. Bad things happening to my family or friends. And I get scared I'm going to lose you," she said on the way home from school earlier this week. I looked at her in the rear view mirror. "Bad things? Like what?" "Like they're getting shot. Or...or some kind of violence." "That's an interesting way to put it. 'Violence.' Did you hear that somewhere recently?" "No," she said. Several weeks ago the house next to The Boss's school was gutted by a fire. Black window sockets still stare at the children every day. There's a tarp on the roof and the remnants of yellow police tape around the yard. One night The Boss cried in bed and said...
Read more

The Freakin' Stink

It happened on the way home from The Partner's parents' house. Apparently, they fed me something they shouldn't have. I let one loose in the midst of a car load consisting of The Partner, The Boss, Number Two, the dog, and me, the fart queen. The odor made its way back to The Boss. "Ewww! What is that freakin' stink?" she yelled. "What is it? What's the freakin' stink?" I tried to decide whether to laugh hysterically or to suggest that she reevaluate her word choice. Instead, I indulged the conversation. "It was me. I farted." "Oh, so you're the freakin' stink," she said. Then, because she's nothing if not supportive: "That's okay. I still love you."
Read more