“Maybe Jesus knew you’d read the word ‘beagle’ today!” I say to her after sounding it out and our remembering that those two matching beagles just walked by the house this morning so she got to hear this strange word. “Or maybe the owner just wanted to walk his dogs…” she says, empirically, with all the rational exposition 300 years of Enlightenment Thinking can produce in its youngest prodigies. I laugh and nod, “Both things can be true, you know.” Because the question I am convinced is built into the factory settings, is Are you there and do you care? That is, is there a “you” to care at all…
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Mush Mom
I guess I thought I was better than this. I thought that at some point some magical switch would flick on – maybe sometime in the pregnancy? Or during labor? I thought at some point there’d be a click (maybe even audible) and I would be Mom. I would unleash the patience and empathy and wisdom and creativity locked somewhere deep inside me just waiting for that magic thing to happen. I remember my first baby growing, feeling her kicks, dreaming of her before I even knew her gender. I remember *feeling* the magic. I read books and decorated her nursery and told her all about the world she would…
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The Gospel According to Wonder Woman
Oh my gosh, see Wonder Woman. Like, close this window, buy a ticket, go. to. it. now. Done? Great. (Otherwise: major spoiler alert!) So holy crap, right?! The scene in No Man’s Land? GAH! The marketing team at Wonder Woman know what they are doing. Because they released this video wherein Gal Gadot (and honestly, what better name could Wonder Woman have than that?) gushes about her daughter and how playing a female super hero is so important to her and hints that Wonder Woman has a uniquely female approach to super-heroing and shows that she really honors the impact this will have on other little girls and cue the tears.…
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On the First Anniversary
People talk about the first year as though crossing that threshold is a thing. I used to hate it because it felt like there was an expectation that a person would be done grieving after a year. But I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s actually a hope for comfort. As if once you’ve made it a year, you will keep making it. You’ve proven to yourself that you can breathe, you can laugh, you can enjoy being her daughter even when she isn’t here the way she should be. One year ago, on June 19 my mother took her last breath. I waited up with the rest of…
