Everything I love is outside of my body; my hands are not long enough to touch.

Our boy lays down in the middle of Target and takes off his shoes. He throws them at unsuspecting customers. They shake their heads, never having seen your body tilted against a doorframe at three a.m. They do not know what I have seen. Some days you are so tired from the way that J can hit, and kick, and spit on you without provocation. Still, you find it impossible to tear yourself away. You stand over our small boy sleeping. Those nights you help him to dream.

You come to bed. I hear you slip between the sheets. I instinctively roll over and away. I am too scared to let you touch me. To scared to let myself admit that this is harder than I thought it would be. I need to protect myself from the memory of how I use to fit against the curve of you. When babies were just wishes we made on nights that were alive with stars, my back was always the soft absence of space pressed next to your heart.

I bury myself in taking J to doctor and therapist visits. I scour the internet for answers. I busy myself in cleaning the kitchen floor. At night, I crash on the sofa in the den. All my energy spent on being hyper-vigilant at the park. After a long day of mediating the distance between J’s sharp teeth and the unsuspecting skin of innocent boys and girls, our mouths become the enemy. We do not kiss the way we did before.

I do not remember the last time I told you I loved you that was not a means to exhaust a fight. We rarely laugh when talking about our future. We barely ever use the word future, at all. Everything feels tenuous, raw as an exposed nerve.  I miss us, but I keep turning my back against your hands that gave up reaching for me a long time ago.

What I want you to know is that some nights when you sleep, I whisper in your ear how much I love you. When the room is dark and still, it is easy to admit to you that I am terrified we will not be able to fix what is angry and sad inside of our boy, what is torn and tender inside of us.

I am not the type of woman who wallows in rainy days and sad songs played on repeat. I believe in action. I do research. I make lists. I do not believe that sadness is impenetrable, until suddenly it is.

Red lights stop me. I am reminded. I see my son. He sits awash in sunlight in the backseat of our car. He wears a Burger King crown and a crooked smile. He is so beautiful. The love I have for him is physical. It is like being kicked repeatedly in the chest. Love like the crushing of my ribcage. I struggle to breathe.

I bargain with the universe. Does every family need to endure a set quota of heartbreak? What is ours?

Doctor’s visits and diagnosis. I want to scream.

Take me. Take my legs. Amputate my hands. Rob me of my eye sight. Disfigure me. Make it impossible for me to piss without a bag attached to my hip. Fill my body with cancer. At the next intersection, let some drunken teenager driving his mother’s Mercedes smash into my driver’s side. Slam my brain repeatedly against the blacktop. Tear me up. Break my bones. Bloody my body.

Strip me of my words. Rob me of everything but, just take your goddamn fucking hands off my beautiful boy. Leave him to his sunshine and his lopsided crown.

J.D Salinger died and it reminded me of John. We were friends in college. The very first night we hung out, he brought me a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I think it is a beautiful thing to call up a person you barely know and invite them to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When you discover they are too poor to afford a simple movie ticket, there is some poetry to be found in arriving unannounced at their dorm room with a copy of your favorite book. It was inscribed with the word, Love.

The night John gave me that book, we used my dorm room bed like a trampoline. We told each other stories. When he was five, John broke all the windows in his parent’s garage and urinated in his mother’s flower bed. When his parents asked him why, he had no answers. They brought him to a psychologist. Jumping up and down, up and down, beside me on my bed, he tried to pinpoint what had compelled him to do what he did. He had no answers. I told him that I thought childhood might become completely foreign and unknowable seen from a particular distance. I was grateful he did not laugh at how sad this observation made me. We collapsed atop my bed, shared a smoke, and willed ourselves to remember the birth canal, the acid trip we were certain was our infancy.

I never told John I was afraid of myself. At the time, one of my professors asked me what I truly cared about. I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly like a ventriloquists dummy. I was stunted like a lobotomy. I blurted out the word dolphins. I mumbled dolphins, and then pushed my chair back and fled from the table so hastily that, had I the courage to turn back and look, I’m sure I would have seen my professor shaking his head as he wiped up spilled coffee from his lap.I never told John any of this. I did not have to.

You do not belong. John whispered this in the parking lot of the Olive Garden, as all my girlfriends piled into the backseat of my car. My good girlfriends who refused to share an apartment with me that year because, as they politely informed me, they were afraid I would borrow their sweaters without asking and try to sleep with their boyfriends. You do not belong. The way John said it made me feel unashamed to be proud.

John gave me a copy of The Catcher in the Rye at a time in my life when I was terribly lonely. I fell in love with Holden Caufield. Loving Holden made me capable of loving just a small part of what I previously thought was ugly in myself. That book simply changed my life. It was given to me by a boy who taught me that intimacy did not have to hurt.

J.D Salinger is gone. I never knew him. It feels silly to be sad, but I am. I feel as lonely as 19, as tender as the folding of a green dress on a hotel bed. I wish I knew what happened to John. If I knew, I would arrive unannounced on his door with a tattered copy of the book. I would inscribe it simply with the words, Thank You.

Holden Caufield knew that he would never be able to wash away all the scrawled words, the Fuck You to the world. John knew, and he taught me, that sometimes you do not have to.

I need to write, but I fear my own words. I am also terrified of the words of others.

My son was evaluated last week. I sit here waiting for reports that may be filled with words like severe ADHD, maladaptive behavior, depression, OCD, high functioning Autism, or Aspergers.

I do not know what words will be attached to my son, or what may need to change based on his diagnosis. I do know that nothing will alter the love I have for my boy. He and I are constant. Still, I fear the words that others will use to write his future.

I am afraid, and I do not know how to write that fear as anything beautiful.  There is a total loss of poetry. I come here and attempt to write prose, but all I get is paralysis.

I believe that words are powerful. I need to use mine. I want to use mine. I truly do.  Instead, I sit here feeling completely impotent, unable to harness any words that are worthy.

Marriage is hard. That is such a simple statement. A true statement. Sometimes marriage is too hard and a couple realizes that they need to walk away. I think that is incredibly brave. I can not imagine how hard it would be. I wonder how many of you have ever wondered if that couple might be you? Maybe you thought it in your head when disappointment built, or aloud in arguments where you strike out to hurt. If so, you are not alone.

I met my husband while in college. We started talking at a dorm room party. We have not stopped talking since that night. We moved in together within six months. We were young and relatively poor college kids, rolling up quarters to buy gas and the cigarettes we smoked back then. We laid on the rooftop. I use to ask him, What if?

What if a genie said he would grant you every wish you had, but it would mean that I had to lose a leg or be horribly disfigured? Would you do it?

Inside a silly game, we both knew what I was asking. There were things that made me afraid. What if you hurt me? What if you lie? What if you break my heart? What if I break yours? I wanted protection against the inevitable.

This year, my husband and I will be married for 10 years, together for over 14. In this space of time, I have broken my husband’s heart in ways both small and large.

Some would say that I am not an easy woman to love. I have thrown around the word divorce as a weapon. I have let my anxiety get in the way of my logic. I have pushed away my husband’s need for the simple intimacy of having me, his partner, look him square in the eyes. I have spent hours on the internet engaging with others when I should have been engaging with my husband. I have even wondered, in the very darkest of moments, if Dave was truly the one. If you knew my husband, what we have together, you would know that this is the most egregious fault. I am not proud.

14 years together. We are not poor. The roof is over our heads. The ground is under our feet. We construct and deconstruct our daily boundaries. We ask questions. We no longer play, outright, the game of, What if? Instead, we live it.

What can we do to make sure our children grow up healthy? If we buy the new house will it be something to make us happy, or a burden we can not afford? What are all the ways we can ask forgiveness for how we hurt each other? If we evolve separately, let us promise to remember that we love under the exact same stars?

I think that what and If might be what constitute a marriage. My marriage has been a series of what and if. It has also been about, Why? I used to constantly ask why does my husband stay with such a difficult woman? Why does he continue to love me so faithfully when I have made so many mistakes? Knowing Dave, he will answer for himself. He will come here and he will say sweet things because he is good and kind and whole in ways that I admire. I am lucky that way.

I do not know if we can ever truly explain, why. Sometimes we just are.

When my husband and I first met, I was unsure and insecure. For a long time, I thought that David saved me from myself, my loneliness, my pain. I have learned that another person can not fix the cracks, the fissures of self. I can take credit for that all on my own, even if I am still a work in progress.

There was a time when I could not see past all that David did for me, to realize that I do for him too. I note with pleasure the absence of space when my hand reaches out to find his. I am a really good listener. I fill our house with goofy laughter. I burn toast with grace. I mother with love and good intent, always, his two children. I am a devoted wife.

I am also a reflective enough wife to know that i have been selfish. Finding myself should not be about dismissing the person that I love. This is what I hope to be forgiven for.

My husband and I are beautifully bound. We fail in a million different ways on a daily basis. But add us up to sum, and we make it work in all the ways that count.

David, I love you. Then. Now. Always.

Last night, I read a post from a well-known male blogger* that made me confused. He wrote about being in high school, having a crush on a girl, being denied her affection. As I first read, I could relate. Who hasn’t wanted someone or some thing so badly they experienced anger when denied? I have. What happens, however, when anger spills over into action?

This particular blogger wrote about thrusting his hand between a young girl’s legs when he and she were both in high school. A girl he described as wearing a silk blouse and no bra. A girl that he desired. A girl that did not want him. While pushing himself unprovoked and uninvited between her most private space, he demanded, “Is this what you wanted?” The story ends with the girl in tears in the backseat of a car, and the blogger admitting his own actions were scary.

I wrote a private e-mail to this blogger and asked him why he shared the piece online. I wanted to know what his motivation was for publishing it. He replied by telling me he wrote the piece because it was true. This made me furious. Does truth automatically make something acceptable? If we write our dirty, hateful, secrets are we immediately made brave just by the telling? What sort of community are we if we heap an author with praise just because he or she sits down and writes about his or her own repulsive act? What sort of society are we when another blogger comments that the young scared girl in that car was not even a victim?

My head spun. I tasted bile in my mouth. I physically shook. I needed to step away, from that blogger, from Twitter, from my own head. I went to sleep. Upon waking up this morning, I realized something. I thought my anger came from wishing this blogger had written the piece with more remorse. Not true. It was not really about that blogger. What I really want is retribution for all women. I want every single man who has ever hurt a woman in a sexual way to spontaneously burst into flames right….about….NOW!

Am I angry? You bet I am. I think the question is why isn’t every person angry that violence still happens in small ways like the backseat of that car? What good is sorry, really? If the two men that took advantage of me, while I stumbled like a sloppy drunk in the snow, apologized for the bloody raw ache they left inside of me, would it make it better. Fuck! No!

This post is not about re-hashing my old wounds or stories. I’ve claimed my own status as a survivor. I do not need to go backwards even when there are posts and people that trigger the memories that propel me down the rabbit hole of my own history. I just need to make sense of why this particular post from this particular blogger had me so enraged. There has to be more than just the telling, his and mine. Simply writing it down is not enough. What do we learn from it?

Some of you who’ve been reading me for awhile might remember a story I told you about when I was younger. There was this cocky kid named Tommy who corned me on a deserted stairwell. He thrust his fingers uninvited and unwanted up my skirt. I was this shy, awkward, girl who had never been looked at much less touched by a boy. It was not what I wanted. It made me scared and confused. What I left out, when I previously told the story, was that three days after the stairwell incident happened Tommy asked me out. I said yes. Yes? It felt strange and scary but good to be wanted, even when the wanting part was done all wrong. Just writing those words brings back all the confusion I felt when holding the phone to my ear and saying yes to dating a boy who previously violated me. I never told Tommy that what he did that day on the stairs felt dirty, frightening, and wrong. I never spoke up when he broke up with me and spread untrue rumors about my body to the entire class. I never said a word. Silence is a weapon young girls and women are taught to use against themselves.

When I first read the post of that popular male bloggers, I felt the same type of conflict that I felt as the scared confused girl I once was. This post was written by a blogger I knew and generally liked. Someone I saw as gentle, dorky, kind. I never would have imagined that story being attached to his history. After reading the post, I could not help but question every thing I knew about him, start to read deeper and more sinisterly into what I thought were previously funny and harmless tweets. It made me wonder how much I could really trust any online “friendship.”

Knowing the blog world like I do, I knew the commendations for his “bravery” were coming. This is where the real tension was for me. I started to doubt myself. Who was I to be angry? Who was I to speak out in dissent? In fact, I wrote a tame first comment on the post where I danced around the issue of my own discomfort. That is what “good” girls are trained to do. Aren’t we? We don’t rock the damn proverbial boat. We never speak out. We maintain the shame in silence.

I think when women are silent we all become the metaphor of that girl in the backseat of the car with some angry guy trying to shove his fist between our thighs. I’m not going to let that happen to me. I can not worry that what I feel is not the acceptable response of the community at large. I can not worry about my own alienation. I will not be 12 years old again, crying in my childhood bedroom.

I think what that male blogger did to that girl was disgusting and wrong. I think some of his tweets are inappropriate. I hope that people read his post and they are shocked and disgusted too. I thought about linking him, but I do not want my writing to be about calling someone out. Even though, that is what I am essentially doing. This really is more about me trying to deal with the complexity of my own emotions.

I hope his post is read. I hope people actually discuss, disagree, determine their own feelings outside of the context of the group. We can learn from this, from anything, if we are willing to go further than just to write disclosure off as some brave act. I do not think there is anything brave about what this blogger did in writing his past down, even though I too found myself using the word “brave” in his comment section. In fact, I think writing this post was an inherently selfish act because the blogger is the perpetrator and not the victim. What is he really looking for? Absolution or traffic? The answer makes a difference to me. Even if it is absolution, it won’t be found so easily here.

I have learned that women do not always need to be so forgiving. I was at 12, and even at 19, forgiving others and hating myself when waking up bruised and missing my underwear. I will never again let my own silence make me that complicit.

*edited to add the link of the blogger. Go here to read his story. Although, since my post has come out, his initial post has changed. He has “toned” down his story. It was originally written about her not having a bra and him putting his hand between her thighs, not just resting on it. I wonder why a person would edit a post that they wrote because it was “true” then quietly change it when people took issue with it. Interesting.

*New Edit*

I asked Neil why he edited the story after the comments and my post came out. He wrote this, “I edited it because it was too intense and I wasn’t getting the reaction I wanted. I am not a journalist. I am a writer.”

*Final Edit*

Neil changed the original blog post back. He also shared this post. I think it is only fair of me to post it. I also hope we continue to have conversations as a community about all the issues that came about because of all these posts and tweets.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

I’ve been reading books about raising children with low impulse control. These books are written by important sounding people with advanced degrees attached to their names. They all say the same thing. Nothing is as crucial as supporting your child’s self-esteem. Self-Esteem is written in bold print, italics, dotted with a million gold stars. You can read the cautionary foot-notes which forewarn of what will happen to your children if you do not bolster their fragile sense of self at every turn. Drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling debts, burglary, prostitution. Your son or daughter will end up living in a cardboard box, somewhere, with nothing but a hungry pack of alley cats to keep him or her company. These “how-to” books write it all out like parenting is an equation. X equals the amount of hugs a child gets divided by the time that mommy spent blogging. Between the pages of these books, I do not add up.

Still, I think about these books while I struggle to get my son to calm down and he keeps spitting repeatedly in my face. Keep your voice calm. Set practical limits. These guidelines I try to remember while I take a boot to the chin, or when J’s angry legs and arms fly like whirligigs across the kitchen.

I do not always stay calm. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I keep screaming. Sometimes I can not stop, even after my voice has gone quiet. I continue shouting in my head. Enough! Enough! Enough! The books do not recommend this as an effective parenting strategy. 


By the end of some nights, I am exhausted. Still, I tuck J into the bed in his new room. He tangles his fingers into my hair. I bury the tip of my nose into his neck. I breathe in.

Me: Are you excited for Christmas, little man?

J: I don’t think Santa is gonna bring me anything for Christmas, Momma?

Me: Of course he is, baby. What makes you think he won’t?

J: I’m a bad kid.

****

Yesterday I had a panic attack. I was driving home from work and my gaslight came on. This happened numerous times before. I am not always good with the details. I lose my cell phone and my keys on a weekly basis. I forget to feed the cat. My children go too long between haircuts. Luckily, I had my wallet. I had enough fuel to exit the highway and find a gas station. I HAD plenty of gas. Stuck, the first car at a light in front of a long line of rush hour traffic. I convinced myself that my car was going to stall. My heart raced. My chest got tight. By the time the light turned green and my car lurched forward, I was hyperventilating. For about a mile long stretch of road, I struggled to maintain the wheel and my composure. My heart slammed against my ribcage like a death match. I pulled into the gas station and handed the attendant my credit card with shaking hands. I rolled up the window while he fueled my tank. I sobbed uncontrollably.

I am fucking this whole parenting thing up? What if J grows up to hate himself? It will all be my fault.

I call my husband. I need someone to talk me down.

You are not fucking things up. You are a good Mom, Kel. Besides, name one person you know who grew up without self-esteem issues.

What my husband says makes me pause. I can’t think of even one person. Not sure what that says about the company I keep, but, somehow the fact that every single person I know has struggled to define him or herself, to feel good about him or herself, to be whole, is comforting.

I get angry sometimes that things can be so hard for J and by extension for me. I never wanted to be the mother who had to meet with the director of special education to have her son tested for behavioral issues, but I am. I never wanted to have a son that can be so difficult to parent that some nights after he has kicked and screamed for so long I am certain my own resolve will break just like the toys he has thrown across the room in rage. Many nights I go and simply collapse on my own bed after my boy falls asleep in his. But, this is who I am. This is who we are together. J and Me.

I love you Momma. I love you a million, a million, a million…..TEN!

J hugs me and his soft blue pajamas brush up against my arms and cheeks. We call these pajamas his Whammer Jammers. They have scattered robots of all sizes and shapes racing up and down his legs. J’s pajamas remind me of when he was just a year old. I used to pretend to be a robot. I even used a robot voice. Nine months pregnant with M, I would chase J around the living room with my arms outstretched while he ran like a Sunday drunk on his wobbly legs to allude me. He ran as fast as his small body would propel him, trying but not really wanting to escape. Each time I caught him, I kissed him on the cheeks. I tickled his neck. I threatened to never let him go. I meant it.

I love you too, J. I love you a million times…. forever.

Please let that be enough.

Kierkegaard said, “Man’s anxiety is a function of his ambiguity, and his complete powerlessness to overcome that ambiguity.”

****

When we got married, I told David I did not want to have children. Just the thought of another person demanding space inside my body made me resentful. He nodded his head as if he was in agreement. My husband, who is as sturdy as a spreadsheet of checks and balances, romanticizes the risks he took in marrying me. I knew you would come around to wanting babies. He told me this once in hindsight, as he watched me rock our firstborn soft to sleep. But, what if I hadn’t? I was outraged at his stubborn patriarchy. In that moment, my husband is a complete mystery to me.

For a long time, I did not want to be a mother, and then I did. That desire grew enormous like a tumor in my body. I ate and breathed and existed for years only to serve this biological function. Time and again, I was met with medical resistance.  I convinced myself that I was cursed. I never should have said I did not want to have babies. Who would have thought that God would listen to an atheist. That I believe my children are miracles makes me flawed and beautiful.

****

Did I ever tell you about the time I made a brazen pass at a famous poet? I did. Every time I read his words, I felt like I was burning. I convinced myself that I was looking for sex, but really it was a strange sort of validation. If he would only bend my legs above my head and make a sonnet of lust out of my body, I believed I could learn to have respect for my own words. My prose the central nervous system, I just wanted the reflex that comes from touching.  Rejection can be a satisfying thing when it forces you to come face to face with who you really are. I am not an animal or an angel. That may be the most difficult thing to reckon.

We are all this state of in-between, the mechanism of self-feeding, like magpies attracted to things that sparkle, broken mirrors we can still see our own images in.

****

My son comes into the bedroom this morning and finds me quietly crying.

J: What’s wrong, Momma?

Me: I’ve been reading a book and it made me sad.

J: Let me see. (He takes the book from my hands.) Is it all sad, Momma?

Me: No baby, not all parts are sad. Some parts are sad, and some parts are beautiful.

J: Show me, Momma. Show me the sad parts.

I read to my son from Impossible Motherhood by Irene Vilar. She writes about the birth of her daughter after choosing to have 15 abortions. She says, I don’t want you to ever succumb to the dismembered life of a false self. Your fate depends, a great deal, on me. Writing this down. I read these words to my son who can’t possibly understand them. He smiles at me.

J: Sometimes I get sad too, Momma.

Me: I know, baby. What should we do with our sadness?

J:  I think we should spit it out of our mouths.

My three-year old son is a poet, a genius, a sage, and my beautiful little boy.

Me: Why don’t you spit your sadness in my hand? Let Momma see it.

(J spits.)

Me: Oh, look at your sadness baby boy. It is heavy in my hand. What color do you think it is?

J: (Laughing) It is purple Momma, like a shadow.

Me: And green like a Monster under the bed.

J: Yes. Momma. Just like that.

Me: I think I am going to eat it up.

(I mock putting my hand to my mouth. J stays me.)

J: No, Momma. Don’t eat it. We should throw it away. We should take your sad and my sad and we should just blow them away.

Yes. This is it exactly.  Love and sex and death and hope and the constant mining of myself to write it down, to get it down, to shape this living with it, it all just waits suspended by the shape of a beautiful boy. He sits next to me on the bed. We cup our palms against our mouths. Our lips form tiny circles. We rise up our hands. We inhale deeply. Together, we gently blow

Who are you, really? This is such a stupid question. You are not an easy person to get to know. A woman I work with tells me this. She pantomimes a wall. She points me out like I am Berlin. The conversation feels ridiculous. I hold fast to my division.

****

I woke up at 3 am. I could not sleep. There was a message from J’s biological mom on my Facebook page. I’m so happy that J has you. She writes. Who better to raise a boy with the struggles J faces than you and Dave? I stand in the kitchen exposed in a plain white tee shirt and two mismatched socks. I ache. I both love and hate my son’s biological mother. She gave me J, and yet, I resent the genetic implications. I am terrified that my mothering, as of late, is not the poignant variety. I lean my forehead against the counter. I have no idea where this is going.

I am grieving terrible the loss of the baby in whose delivery I was made witness. I am not sure who the child is that has replaced my darling boy. The infant whose body I held to calm only moments after his birth is suddenly missing. Everyday I hold my son. I rock him through his violence. I tell him that I love him, and wait patient for my heart to catch up to my words. I write down the sting. I watch my son, now fast asleep. I do love him so fiercely it sucks the oxygen from the room. This only manifests into self-hatred. I am guilty of withholding tenderness when my son becomes all wild and dangerous limbs. I recoil from his disproportional rage.

It can be so hard to stay present. Some days I think that books, art, and music, like my writing, are the only things that I can identify with. God, that is so pretentious and melodramatic. It is also mostly true. I need this space to be stunning, even when it feels like a shotgun blast that leaves a gaping hole in my belly.

Is a breakdown really such a beautiful thing? In the movie Garden State, the main characters wear lemon yellow garbage bags and orchestrate their screams against a dark abyss. They are met with the sound of their own echo. You know what scares me most of all, that the sound of my own voice might be universally flat? I am desperate for some reverberation.

What I do not need is to be told that I am a good mother. It does not help to be comforted with platitudes stating how lucky my son is to have me. This is entirely pointless. If you really want to help me, if you really want to know what you can do, tell me about the worst days of your life. Do not spare me the terror surrounding your recovery.

I can not breathe. I dream the weight of stones pressing heavy on the back of my throat. I am like the last lines of a Beckett play, Let’s go. Yes. Let’s go, only to be bound by stage directions. It is not suppose to be this hard. I am not suppose to be feel this trapped. But, I do.

My three-year old is screaming upstairs as I type this. I put him to bed three hours ago, exhausted by his fits, doors slammed, toys thrown, anger and constant unmet expectation. I kiss him soft as sparrow’s wings and stay by his bedside until he drifts to sleep. I try and tip-toe down the stairs, but he wakes up, and wakes up, and keeps waking expectant and needy every half hour. I feel like I’m drowning in his greed to touch my hair and smell my skin. I lose my patience and finally yell at my husband, who has long gone to sleep. I demand that David wake up and be a father. He looks at me with sleep and bitter. It reminds me of all the ways that I am failing.

We use to be young. We used to try and pants each other in the kitchen. Do you remember the smell of snowflakes falling on a Buffalo winter?

Figure it out, Kelly. You need to figure this out. I wonder when he expects that this will happen between the full-time job at work and the full-time job at home being a mother, in between the navigating phone calls to doctors to set up the battery of tests that are suppose to give us answers. Answers that only serve to scare us both into protracted silence like a thick rope that strangles. Bet we never imagined it was going to be quite this hard. Marriage should not be like a luke-warm bottle of beer full of yeasty sadness. Mothering is not suppose to feel this lonely.

When my son was small enough to cradle in my hands, I used to sing him Joni Mitchell songs at midnight. I use to rock him on my shoulder pressed against his tiny belly, one hand upon the round of his back. Bleary-eyed, sleepless, on instinct. I knew exactly what my infant son needed. I try and sing those same songs as lullaby to my son, now. He puts the small spread of his hands over my mouth. He reminds me that he is no longer my baby. Oh, but you are, my darling boy. You are. Even if I am bereft.

And, we are, my darling man. We are. Even in these days we live as disappointment.