water always wins

It was just the littlest one and me, home alone for the hot, sticky afternoon.

He can be such trouble these days, all curiosity and mischief, quiet feet, wide eyes.

He is always, "naked boy!" stripping down the moment we get back from an outing, losing his clothes under and behind.

"Baby," I implore, "where is your shirt? What happened to your shorts?"

He grins, and shrugs, "I dunno," and scampers off, all delicious baby skin and tiny, baby bones.

What does it mean to be born last, to seasoned (if still learning, constantly expanding) mamas, who have done this all (several times) before?

For one thing, it means that when it's 100 degrees outside and humid, and your mom is grouchy and dripping, and stuck to herself, you will be given a hose, and an empty plastic bin, and a single bath toy. You will be completely engaged with these things, and ask her for nothing for nearly two hours.

And overall there may be less parental attention, less fixation on your every developmental leap, fewer worried nights spent wide-eyed, watching your chest rise and fall. But, still, you reap the benefits of all that has been figured out, realized and finally understood, before you even arrived: that the answers are really quite simple, that less is most usually more, and that water always wins.

heat wave

It is one million degrees outside, and she sighs, determined (the way one might halfheartedly declare, "we are going to run five errands with six children in tow"), "we are going to the river." And so, we do: my lover, the two girls and I. We drive there stiffly, tight-lipped, thighs stuck to the leather seats of the car.

"Is the air conditioning not working?"

"No, I don't think it is." 

"Fuck."

 

We can barely tolerate the sweetest of questions from the back seat.

"Mama? Can anybody touch a cloud? What does it feel like?"

My brain is a cloud in this heat.

But then we arrive, and the river is just as perfect as it could possibly be.

I love swimming with her best of all.

I love rivers. I love being in a river.

I love being in my body when it's not one million degrees.

I wish to be swimming naked, for the other swimmers to vacate the area, for her to press herself against me, all slippery skin in this cool, clean water.

But I make do with bathing suits and onlookers.

And the drive home is a whole new day.

growing

I said, "will you marry me?" and, "let's plant a garden."
She said, "ok, yes," and, "first we need some dirt."




I mostly just watch and learn. Her hands know what to do.

The plants mostly just grow by themselves. They are really very alive.




The children like the picking best of all. We ask the littlest ones to check with us before picking the not-yet-ripe tomatoes. We teach the oldest ones to see the difference between the pickling cukes and the slicers.

We send them outside with instructions: bring me three leaves of romaine and a green pepper, please.



On Monday, I went to therapy, to talk about the kids, and parenting, and the kids' other mother (whom I am no longer married to), and at one point the therapist smiled and said, "I think you are growing up."

And I said, "yes, I think I am, too. I feel like maybe I am a grown-up, after all."

 

Sometimes, when you fall in love, everything else falls, too. And sometimes that's the falling-and-breaking-into-tiny-pieces kind of falling, and sometimes it's more like the falling-into-place kind.

We have this garden, and it's growing so well.

families should

"I read an article about how families should eat more octopus."

She says this nonchalant-like. Serious and regular and off-hand. Food is important--for so many reasons bigger than nutrition--and nutrition is important, too. Articles, also: important.

I stare at her, silently, eyebrows raised, our bare legs entwined under thin cotton, heavy heads half-supported by the cushions of the green couch. It is 2:45 a.m. on the kitchen clock. We have already fallen asleep once, in the middle of watching some movie, and are now delaying the inevitable separation that will come with continued sleep: I will have to go upstairs to sleep amongst some number of boy children in the king-sized bed, she will stay the rest of the night on the couch.

"It's affordable and nutritious," she continues, completely convinced.

I start to laugh, and can't stop. And now she is laughing, too. We laugh together at all of it: at ourselves, at this one funny thing, at every single thing that has ever been funny. I love her most of all in this moment. Eyes sparkling in dim lighting, hair tangled around naked shoulders. When it feels like us against the world, when we're faced with the ridiculousness of life and restriction, recommendation and rules, hitting up against guidelines and suggestions of best practice; and we just can't stop laughing. Because we have this thing. And it's bigger than everything. And we are so alive in it.



This is a love story.