Madwoman

It was time to transition into being like the mothers I’d seen at the park with their books, looking up every so often to make sure their children hadn’t been abducted, and no more.

The world is not made for mothers. Yet mothers made the world.

know you didn’t want the pity of strangers. At that time, I was only newly attuned to the life-sucking energy of pity, the way it stretched the canvas for shame.

Siblings are lifelong companions, my husband said often, as if reciting a line from some handbook only he had access to, and I sucked it all down, not knowing any better,

But while the other mothers told you BOB made the best double stroller, they failed to mention what to do when your older child resented you for your younger child’s existence.

And hadn’t Lark just been a baby in the Ergo mere weeks ago, asleep or halfway there most of the time? But life had transformed again.

the first day Lark would no longer be breastfeeding. The night before we had sung a special song and talked about how this was his last time for what he called Nonnies, that he’d done such a great job drinking all the milk. All the milk was gone, and it had made him big and strong. He had just turned three. It was time.

It was Lego or nurse. Lego or nurse. His endurance amazed me, the way his cries only got louder, his face redder, the sands of logic sifting through a bottomless hourglass until nothing existed but noise.