the goose egg (essay)

the first time I saw my dad cry

ADD 

Hide and seek

Hide and seek with Wilder is a trip because he will just reveal himself, quickly. To say this is the wrong way to play misses the point. There is no right way to play. In his mind, hide and seek is a game where you hide and almost immediately reveal where you have hidden so that the other person can find you and joy can be had by all.

Cheese sweats

I used to think doing stuff like that - hitting myself, slamming things - was cool. Or manly, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t think much of it at all besides a vaguely vindicating feeling afterwards like, ‘see, I am fucked up - why else would I do something like that?’ 

Which makes sense given how little physical proof there is of

I remember a fight I had with my parents when I was 15 or 19 – we were in the kitchen and I got so mad I punched a banana that was on the counter. It exploded and went everywhere all over me and the walls. We all laughed but not in a cathartic, all is great now way. Still, the anger was there, probably even more so for my parents who cleaned up the

tiem moves like slowsand

Time does not so much stop but sloshes around, viscous, gloppy, unsettling in a way that does not come out in the wash, like you’re stuck in quicksand that is by no means quick, it is slowsand, your daily descent so minuscule you do not realize it is happening until its too late, like the frog in the water that boils so

Like who is this person who says “I’m not going to ask you again.” I have never said such a phrase and why would I?

How it started

Wilder was losing his shit, yet again, and I wanted to help Lauren by taking the kids to the playground. But Wilder refused, so I said I’d move his body - a trick we learned in daycare - but he slipped out of my grip like a lil eel and was now sprinting all over the house that sounded like a baby crying because there is also a 6mo

Narts (ending story probably?)

We’ve switched up the bedtime routine recently – reading books is now the last thing, not the first, which means first up is brushing teeth and doing a pee pee. He does not want to stop playing though so I tell him I will have to move his body if he doesn’t wanna go and I count to three. On one his body jumps like he’s

Notes

• Hide and seek in bed, eyes cover face.The poof thing where his face should have been scaring me. 

• Shushing him. The privilege of that. Being allowed here in this most intimate of space. The space that will soon not be accessible to me not really because he will want it for himself or begin to fight for it himself as he becomes someone that I am