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It's a Boy

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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...
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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...
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The Boss Gets Promoted to Mayor Of Tantrum Town

I don't know what to do with The Boss. Literally and figuratively. Any which way you look at it, smell it, taste it, hear it or touch it, I do not know what to do. So I improvise. I read to her, a lot. I know I can do that much. We read Dr. Suess after Sesame Street after Happy Baby board book, because books don't cause tantrums. Then we read the "I Love My Daddy" book and my mind wanders to The Partner at work, who's probably right now thinking he has it so tough. Thinking I do nothing at home but shirk laundry duty and post to my blog. Thinking The Boss watches too much TV. Eventually we leave the book case in favor of the open road. I strap her into her car seat and slink in front of the steering wheel. Since making eye contact only serves to rile the beast, I look ahead. I consult the rear view mirror in a traffic assessment, but I dare not even glance at The Boss. I know from experience that her mannerisms will be calm, her gaze all-seeing. Sometimes she fold...
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