My father didn’t come to my wedding in 2017. Jackie offered to travel with him, from Philadelphia to Wisconsin. He couldn’t manage it, he told me. Too much.

The week or so before the wedding, a package arrived in the Wisconsin mailbox. I remember one of the girls opening it in the back seat as we drove into town. It was a slim, braided leather whip, coiled like a snake in delicate tissue paper. A wedding gift from my father. I felt shame redden my face, as if I’d done something wrong. Yes, from Poppy. No, not sure how he meant it. Let’s just put it away.

Did my father and I ever have the conversation, about the whip? Or did I, like I had so many times with him, just imagine what I would have said?

Some version of me — real or imagined — asked him why he would think a whip would make a good wedding gift. This is my memory. Some version of him replied, “For all those kids. Can’t you take a joke?” This was him, even if this never happened.

My father had little interest in the life that was taking me west to Wisconsin. To him, I think it was just another character and setting to remember: the doctor with four children, the house on acres of lupines and prairie grass. New man, new zip code. You know Jennifer, I can imagine him telling his theater friends, and I wouldn’t blame him. Dad had his wine, his Marlboros, and his adoring fans; I had love affairs. Neither one of us thought much of the other’s habits, but it always made for a story.

In my single-mother days, when wine and anger had less hold on him, he was happy to feel needed, fatherly. Every few months, he would drive the five hours north to our little house in Massachusetts. I looked forward to his visits. There was always a bag of fresh soft pretzels on the passenger seat for me, and and several gallons of wine in his trunk. The wine never came into the house all at once. An unspoken concession.

There were good days with him, then. He liked that I needed his help. It was more comfortable for him when I was struggling, another thing I didn’t blame him for. I needed help more than I needed my pride, and I welcomed his handiwork. Dad hung a medicine cabinet, tube lighting over the kitchen sink, and installed a new doorknob and lock on the back door. He tinkered with wonky outlets, a busted sump pump, and broken shower heads. When our front porch rotted and sagged, he and my friends contributed heftily to the cause so I could get it rebuilt by proper contractors.

Dad loved to watch the guys work, a cigarette and a glass of wine in his hand at 9 a.m. When my dad joked that the only shoddy part of their porch construction was nowhere to put his cup of coffee, they returned with an improvised coffee rest that could be slid across the railing.

He looked a little worse for wear each time I’d see him.

“You need to see a doctor,” I’d say.

“Doctors are for sick people,” he'd say. “Why would I want to be around sick people?”

Sporadically, my brother and I took turns visiting him. We pleaded the case for some lab workups, floated the (very unwelcome) idea of rehab for his drinking. The dates are lost to me now, as nothing positive came of these wishful visits. At one point, Joe was able to get him to the ER, but there would be no follow-up by my dad — something Joe understood even before my dad was discharged.

A few years closer to the end, my dad told me I needed to come down to help him out. He was vague, which wasn’t uncommon, but his voice over the phone was strained. When he opened the door of his apartment, a wall of smoke, alcohol, and sickness shocked me. He was gaunt and looked like he hadn’t showered or slept in months. The apartment was in an unspeakable condition, with ominous dark stains streaked on the walls and the upholstery. Streaks of blood, maybe worse, in the carpet. His bedroom broke me: His sheets, pillows, and blankets were unsalvageable.

I got to work cleaning. That was the easiest choice to make in that moment, immediate and requiring no introspection. I went to Kmart for Pine-Sol, rubber gloves, and chisel. I retched silently as I scrubbed the toilet and the bathroom floor, not wanting him to hear me or feel any more shame than I knew he already did. What happened here? Was it my fault, in some way?

For a decade, Dad had been declining. That much, we had understood. He carried a wadded handkerchief, folded to make the blood less visible. His cough had gotten worse, but he didn’t want to hear about it. “Just getting over a cold,” he’d say. He’d lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose. But it wasn’t until I stood within the context of his apartment that I understood how much I hadn’t understood.

I went to Wawa, his favorite, to get us hoagies and more wine. If ever there was a time for wine, this was it. The 12-Step Program would not kick off today. He sipped his cup of cabernet in his mother’s rust-orange chair, hunched and miserable, while I started on the kitchen. The dishwasher was full of dirty dishes that had been there for several months, unwashed and unrinsed. The refrigerator was in the same condition, with cartons of curdled blocks of sour milk and colonies of bacteria building rival kingdoms. It was terrible for him, to have me here, like this.

“What if we go to the hospital tomorrow, Dad? We have to get you some help, figure out what’s going on.”

“Maybe next week, when I’m feeling a little better.”

Everything, including the pots and pans, went into the trash. What had he been eating? His kitchen cabinets were mostly empty, but hanging from the knobs were hundreds of tiny black plastic cats — a promotional topper for a time on El Gato Negro wine bottles. I threw them in the garbage, something I would never have dared to do had he been less desperate to keep me there. He liked his little collections.

I hauled Hefty bags to the apartment complex dumpster and heaved them in, feeling dirty to my bones. I took his Citizens Bank card and bought him new clothes, linens, and frozen dinners that I doubted he would eat. I made his bed with fresh sheets, stiff from the package, and a cheery comforter with the price tag I forgot to remove.

We left the apartment for a little while, for some fresh air, to run a few errands. We went to the Acme to dump three Folger’s coffee containers full of his spare change into the counting machine. The machine choked and spit a tooth into my eye. I held the yellow molar in my hand and showed it to my dad.

“Huh. Forgot that was in there,” he said.

It was a bizarre moment, something out of a dream that flits back to you the next day, stranger than before.

Before I left, I told him I didn’t think I could stomach another visit like this again. I told him I had one of these visits in me, but that was it. He blew smoke out the corner of his mouth, just out of my direction. He looked like he had something to say, but was exercising a rare bit of restraint. I hugged his bones goodbye. He was grateful, and told me so.

But this was the second time, not the first, that my father had asked me to clean up. In the mid-2000s, after his sister died, his drinking worsened. He sent me to North Carolina, to check in on my aunt’s log cabin. “There was a fire,” he told me, slurring. “You have to go. You have to go for me, Jennifer.”

His grief at her loss trumped ours. We couldn’t understand, he said. She was the best person he ever knew, and now, she was gone. Why was he still here?

I went to North Carolina; David stayed with the girls. I arrived alone at my aunt’s cabin in rural North Carolina to find the door kicked in and the living room floor gone. I heard someone bolt into the woods from the screen door in the back of the house, and I froze: Was anyone else still here?

A burnt crater was all that remained at the center of the cozy log cabin my aunt, a prolific writer, nun, and peace activist, called Peace Hill. I should have left immediately, I know that now. This was, after all, not just a fire, as my drunk father had said. Had he known? The horror of needing to know kept me frozen in place. Razor blades were strewn all over the floor and in the sinks. Profane graffiti covered the walls, and there were handcuffs dangling from doorknobs. The desecration made my stomach churn.

I ran back to my rental car and ran blindly down a driveway to find a neighbor. When the sheriff arrived, we found the head of a deer in the unplugged refrigerator. There is too much terribleness to tell, about the crime of my aunt’s North Carolina cabin. I felt obligated to go for him, to do right by him, to do what my father swore he couldn’t do.

Maybe I just want to say it once, that the debacle of his apartment was the second time I’d tried to set things right, the best I could. I struggle writing any of this down, knowing he was not one who enjoyed being looked at too closely.

But that was so long ago, so long ago, my aunt’s cabin, and his grief over her loss. I couldn’t even tell you the year. You will tell me there is nothing to apologize for, certainly not for telling a rambling story out of sequence. You understand. You know that memory does not like numbers and cannot be coaxed into chronological order, and that’s why you are here.

So forward, again, to the last time.

I went just one more time to my father’s apartment. I want to say it was late 2018, early 2019, before the pandemic took hold. Again, he needed me, and the apartment was beyond what he could manage.

I couldn’t do it again.

In my mind, two cleaners come. Two Latina women, kind and not inclined to judge. Did they? Did I imagine them, scrubbing my father’s toilet and the well of his washing machine?

A cousin of my father’s is what I remember, who I remember, that last time at the apartment. A big, jovial cousin, booming small talk in my father’s living room. His forced good cheer made me dizzy, in the middle of all the disorder and sadness.

“I need your help here,” I remember saying. “He says you buy him his groceries and his wine. You can’t keep bringing him wine. He needs cleaners. He needs a social worker. And a doctor.”

My father could not even stand up for this conversation. But he was adamant that it would not happen again, that he was fine. The two men told me this was fine. Everything was fine enough, for now.

“It’s not fine. None of this is fine. Do you not see the wall? Have you seen the bathroom, his sheets?”

“Shut up, Jennifer,” said the cousin.

Time moved faster, then. The feeling of a deadbolt in my chest, locking into place. I grabbed my things. My father struggled to turn in the old armchair, to tell me to hang on a second, wait.

I saw panic, then, something he’d always told me not to do. Don’t panic, I’ll tell you when to panic.

He reached for me with one bony arm. He said he loved me, but for the first time I heard resignation in his voice. I would not come back. It’s possible he knew this before I did.

I left him with his cousin, still waiting for my father to write him a check for another box of wine and some Stouffer frozen dinners.

Everyone has a last time I saw him story about someone they loved. You’ll never hear a happy one, and they’re not in short supply. We turn them over and over in our hands, trying to make sense of what was lost, trying to remember what we said and what they said. Did we touch? Kiss? What did their hands look like?

My father didn’t die that month. But he worsened fairly quickly. The equation that started the domino spill was an acute collapse, an ER admission, a hospital stay, then weakness enough to merit two different stays at two different rehab centers.

“You have to come get me, Jennifer,” he said on the phone to me near the end, on one of those last calls. “You have to get me out of here. It’s hell. We’re family. This is what family does.”

But I couldn’t come get him, and even if I could have, I don’t know what I would have done. It was high COVID season, and no one was going anywhere, especially not onto any healthcare unit.

Someone called to say my father had come down with COVID at the rehab center. They admitted him to the hospital that had sent him here, and he never left.

“This is probably the best outcome,” my brother said. “He won’t feel anything. The morphine will take care of the air hunger.”

The nurse wouldn’t let me on the phone with my father, at first.

“You know, he’s very, very angry at you,” she told me. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

I told her my father was angry with the world, and I had decided not to take it personally, a long time ago. I told her she should do the same, and let me talk to my father.

But still she refused to let me speak to him, until my brother made a stern call in his official capacity, as Dr. Joe Mattern. An hour later, the nurse relented and held the phone to my father’s ear.

“Dad, it’s Jenn,” I said.

He was hard to understand, a mix of the meds, the missing dentures, the kidney failure, the oxygen. He mumbled something, and then a little more. I thought I heard something close to warmth, close to relief.

“It’s okay, Dad. Don’t try too hard. Why don’t you rest, and we’ll talk later, okay?”

He seemed to understand this. He said something I couldn’t quite catch.

“I love you, Dad,” I said, hoping he was still listening, that the nurse hadn’t taken the phone away.

After a moment, I heard his voice again, and I heard what sounded like peace, maybe a little like forgiveness, in the space between sounds.

Albums are not released anymore. Now they drop, like fat dollops of cookie dough onto a sheet pan, or a water balloons on rough pavement.

“It was really nice of Taylor to plan this for your birthday,” I say.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to use headphones?” Sophie asks, a little surprised that I am counting down with her. It’s a leisurely wait, but I don’t mind.

“Definitely,” I say. “I’ve never been part of a Taylor drop. I want the whole experience.” I really do. My girls live in Montreal and Toronto now. I miss their singing in the backseat of my car.

We pass the time until the drop by taking an online quiz: What Class of Dungeons & Dragons Character Are You?

It’s harder than it sounds. Sixty questions long, it feels more like a psych hospital admission questionnaire, something with which I am familiar.

“Would you say I’m resilient and able to bounce back after failure?” Sophie asks me.

“Are you kidding? You’re incredibly resilient,” I say. “I don’t know how you do what you do.”

She scowls slightly, the same worried baby face she’s had since she was an infant. She is overthinking this quiz, as am I. We are the best overthinkers in the business.

“Would you say I am willing to make deals with terrible people to complete important tasks?” I ask.

“Ooh, that’s a hard one. I try not to,” she says.

“Yeah, but I sort of have to, on a regular basis.”

“Ah, good point,” she says, laughing. She knows who I’m talking about. Real-life stepmothering is not for the weak, in a culture that borrows heavily from Disney myths. You can offer three-course nutritious meals, warm hellos, and unlimited help with homework, and still hear back from the other castle that you’re slipping the kids poison apples.

We tally our quiz results: Sophie is 95% paladin. She is pleased with this result. I am displeased to learn that I am 80% barbarian. I wanted very badly to be a bard.

“I was just honest.” I am now pleading (whining) my case to the paladin in the other hotel bed. “I allowed for moral ambiguity and the experience of my years. There are bad people in the world. I am not going to pretend I love them or care about their welfare. There are people who DESERVE to be eaten by gelatinous cubes or clubbed by orcs. If that makes me a barbarian, well, then I’m a barbarian.”

“It’s not bad to be a barbarian,” she tells me. “It just means you’re passionate…about what you’re fighting for.”

This quiz does help pass the time as we wait for Taylor. Sophie’s excitement is growing. Now she’s furiously typing on her phone: her group chat is blowing up. This is a BIG drop, apparently.

It’s a big birthday too, from where I’m sitting. I can’t quite reconcile the 4-pound infant of April 19, 2001 with this flushed, happy human slash paladin across the nightstand from me. Her hair is shiny black and coiled, still damp from her bath earlier.

Before Sophie dropped, I prayed she’d get her father’s walnut curls. I still don’t know why God only seems to entertain small requests.

Me in 2000: Please, God, give her curls like her father’s.

God: And so it shall be! Your firstborn shalt have the curly hair for which you have prayed!

Me in 2024: Also, please, no more war, no more school shootings, no more Donald Trump, Putin, MAGA, floods, earthquakes, rapes, racism, misogyny, forced birthing, animal abuse, honor killings, billionaires, police brutality, tiny plastics, stillborns, suicides, and cancer.

God: Your firstborn still hath great hair. As does your secondborn, especially when she uses a diffuser.

Me: Yeah, thanks, but hey! That was 23 years ago. Could I get something else off my list now?

God: …

It’s cozy in room 1112. I don’t understand all of the terribleness outside our hotel room window and so far beyond. The U.S. is effed. The world is effed. Even sweet Canada to our north is effed. We’re in Toronto tonight — Hattie’s university turf. The city glitters like a broken mirror around the CN Tower needle. So many homeless souls, with nowhere to bathe a body, or build a life. During the day, we step around ragged souls trying to sleep on warm subway grates, and glide by others who have wedged themselves into the city’s darkest nooks and crannies.

I’m feeling lucky right now and guilty for it at the same time. It’s sometimes hard for me to believe a sentient force could have created this universe without feeling compelled to intervene in it, to make right of at least some of the wrongs. The nuns of my childhood blamed the world’s unpleasantness on free will. All mess is our fault, and Jesus took a big one for the team.

It makes no more sense to me now than it did then. If anything, I have more anger now, toward a God who grants curls, but not safety, to girls, the God who shrugs at suffering. It’s no wonder we do, too, most of the time.

My hotel bed is absurdly comfy. We are safe, sheltered, and waiting for Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department. The world is this small, for tonight.

The group chat is blowing up. Sophie can’t barely contain herself. My firstborn is thriving creatively. A jazz singer with one year left at McGill, she has her shit together, despite having a lot of shit to deal with. My good fortune is a front row to her life and her sister’s. It feels like wholly undeserved blind luck.

When midnight comes, I turn my thoughts to Taylor.

“It’s out!” Sophie yelps, switching to Spotify.

Fortnight fills the room.

I’m searching for lyrics online. “Found them!”

“Already? Wow,” Sophie says.

I was supposed to be sent away
But they forgot to come and get me

“Okay, I love that line,“ I say.

I was a functioning alcoholic
'Til nobody noticed my new aesthetic

All of this to say
I hope you're okay but you're the reason
And no one here's to blame
But what about your quiet treason?

I kind of love it, but I wait for the songbird’s take. She also kind of loves it. Taylor’s lyrics are pleasing for a lot of us writer types: extreme, imperfect, wetly witty.

We work our way through the whole album. It gets sweeter and thicker as it goes: a melancholy molasses, run through with streaks of blood. The Taylor detractors will go wild, we know it. The new album is primal, raw, messy, huge, an easy target for hating online. The forecast: a summer of cicadas and viral misogynists.

I can’t worry about the cicadas or the misogynists tonight. We’ve listened to the whole thing, Side A through Side D, and it’s good. My sleepy meds have finally kicked in and that blessed (see, that’s a good use of the word) slumber is creeping in around my ears.

“Happy birthday, baby girl,” I say.

“Thanks for staying awake with me for the drop,” she says. She’s happy, my Swiftie birthday girl slash paladin. She snaps off her bedside lamp. The only sound in room 1112 is the brown noise app we both use for sleeping. At 2 a.m. Taylor will release a second album, something Sophie suspected she might do. Such birthday bounty.

Outside the window, Toronto glitters on.

His Darth Vader breathing, combined with wheezing, sneezing, and ropes of mucous whipped onto walls and furniture, had stumped our vet.

Our cat needed a CAT scan, she told us. At a fancy vet office.

“Our vet thinks he needs a CAT scan,” I tell Mihailo. “A CAT SCAN, HA.”

Mihailo loves this cat, but our household is also a revolving door when it comes to money. Six children, five animals, one mother in memory care, one ex-wife. There is a fresh stack of bills on the kitchen island, with shocking sums that would have stopped my heart back in my Massachusetts single-mom days.

“How much did our vet think it would be?” he asks.

“A couple thousand.”

“Agghhherrrr” is the closest representation of what comes out of his mouth. When it comes to vet decisions, I make the dog calls, he makes the cat calls. Skinny Cat is only 7. He is a supremely good-tempered and snuggly guy, everybody’s favorite kitty.

“Okay,” Mihailo sighs. “Let’s do it.”

So our cat got a CAT scan and a biopsy. His day at the specialty vet with the fancy equipment cost more than our 2008 Toyota Rav is worth online.

The findings: An unidentifiable something, possibly a fungus, possibly an infection, has ravaged and “remodeled” poor Skinny Cat’s sinuses permanently.

“So, could this shorten his lifespan?” I asked.

“It could,” the vet said.

Administering oral antibiotics and antihistamines to a frantically clawing Skinny Cat was definitely shortening my lifespan, so the steroid cream in his ear flap is how we’re rolling now.

I am the James Herriot of Stillwater, Minnesota. The tending suits me. After Skinny Cat’s ear steroid, Bella gets her thyroid med, pressed into a square of cheese. Then Messi gets his liver support chewable and his Cosequin pills, at least one of which he will spit out onto the floor. Take two is usually successful. After that, it’s onto the left ear flush (constantly infected). Next up is the excavation of the dried mucous and slimy, macerated skin cells in his nose with a wet paper towel. This is, it goes without saying, not pleasant for either of us. Finally, it’s back to the left ear with antibiotic drops, then one more tango with his nose — his own special steroid cream, to keep the lupus at bay.

I’m supposed to administer cat steroid and dog steroid creams with rubber gloves, like Meredith Grey. If I die of steroid poisoning, this is because I am too cheap and too lazy to add surgical gloves to my daily routine.

I don’t know how to help the big things, how to fix the terribleness happening all around in this heartbreaker of a world. But I know how to help Skinny Cat and Lupus Dog, and occasionally, a human or two.

Not much (and almost everything) has changed in Breed ‘Em and Weep land, though my breeding is done and regular weeping has mostly concluded. There are still animals to tend to, kids to tend to, bills to tend to, an old house to tend to. Not enough paid work, too much laundry, a smattering of slow-moving creative projects, a few plants unlucky enough to live here.

I remember the days of a collapsed front porch, oil tank running dry, pipes bursting in the cold, and sewage explosions in the haunted basement. I remember my far-off dreams of a cranberry screen door or a wood stove, and wishing for somebody to weather the day-to-day with. I remember you lovely folks who got me through those days. Here’s to all of you tending sorts. I hope I can find you again and offer you a virtual cup of tea and an overdue thanks for all you offered me back then.

Listen to her husband speak shyly into a microphone about this installation of his; learn that it is titled Primary Separation. Consider your own primary separation: you are less than a yard away from your favorite person that you have never met, and she will never know that you risked your life squirming into two foundation garments just to be here.

Meryl Streep is friendly, engaging, lovely. Did you already say lovely? Yes, you did. It bears repeating. The master of ceremonies takes a minute to state the obvious, perhaps hoping that any gawkers will get it over with, once and for all: "Don's wife, Meryl, is a unique artist in her own right." She accepts this with low-key modesty, and the focus shifts back to her husband and his work, as it should.

Feel guilty that your focus is less shiftable. Reel at the sound of that familiar laugh, right there, right there, no soundtrack! The luck! She is a proud, delighted wife, and it is charming to see. Watch as she and her daughter snap pictures of Don with their shiny cellphones.  Wonder how many of these events they have attended. Wonder what it is like to be lovely Meryl Streep's daughter and to own such fabulous motorcycle buckle boots at such a young age. Wonder what the Streep-Gummers keep in their refrigerator, and if their pets do unspeakable things to their rugs. One of the reasons you like Meryl so much is that you can so easily imagine her swearing under her breath as she scrapes dog poo out of a braided rug. You can picture her running out for ice cream at 10pm in a hopelessly unattractive parka, or in bed with the flu, blowing her nose and laughing hysterically in her oldest flannel pajamas as she reads an article her publicist has sent her, a piece that describes her as "Hollywood royalty." 

Get a hold of yourself. Rein yourself in. Repeat your mantra: Do not do the things you must not do. Do not do the things you must not do. It's not that it is hard for you not to do these things; it's just that your brain likes to try to convince you that you have done these things. You know that your brain is lying to you, but you feel pre-humiliated nonetheless. In the short time that you have been standing here, your brain has already logged a series of very vivid images of you doing various Things You Must Not Do, like punning uncontrollably about rocks to Meryl (I'm in between a rock and a heart place, because I HEART YOU MERYL STREEP I REALLY REALLY HEART YOU) or telling her that you have the same birthday and that you have always interpreted this as a sign and that you also have a knack for the accents, particularly those of Eastern European flavor.

Put your foot down. Tell your brain if it doesn't knock it off, you will dash your skull against the Donald Gummer art rock to beat your mind into submission and you won't care who's watching. 

The official remarks have just ended, and the crowd heads across the street to the museum for a reception and a tour of some of Gummer's early work. Follow the crowd. 

Meryl follows you. Your heels are actually tingling. A fine day! A marvelous day! So far, you have not wheeled around and attempted a single rock pun. You have not confessed to anyone present that you are wearing two foundation garments. This is shaping up to be a most promising afternoon. As promised by the friend with connections, you are on the list. YOU ARE ON THE LIST. You are never on the list. This is big.

Slap a museum sticker on your muzzled bosom, which growls and tries to break free from its Spanx Tube of Death to bite you on your chin. Ignore your bosom and glide into the museum. Make a beeline for the wine. Try hard to think about art. But it is difficult for a serf to think about art in a room full of vassals, especially when one is a serf who really should be slopping the pigs or sloshing human waste out of the window of her thatched hut. So far, the vassals have not noticed you, but you are sure they will if you make the mistake of opening your mouth. Clamp your mouth shut. Press your plastic cup against your lips and think of pigs. Vassals, vassals everywhere, and so many drinks to drop on the floor.

Don Gummer's exhibition is in a narrow gallery space, and there are a lot of intelligent, tastefully dressed persons milling about sipping wine and saying intelligent, rational things to each other. These people are either being careful not to glance in Ms. Streep's direction, or they are very good at compartmentalizing and doing the thing that they are here to do, which is, simply, pondering Don Gummer's art. Envy them. Stare despondently at a family of rocks resting contentedly upon a row of steel wires. You are not a good compartmentalizer.  Everything you see and hear and know is connected to everything else. You find signs and symbols and omens and links and parallels and echoes in everything that crosses your path. You feel too much, all the time, and you are hopelessly distracted by the shooting-star stimuli: Is her bag a Birkin? If so, surely a gift? Meryl seems far too sensible to drop $5K on a white leather tote that will be impossible to keep clean.

Inside the gallery, Meryl is constantly flanked by lovely people or important-looking people or lovely-and-important-looking people. Human buffers: they do not leave her side. Good friends. Your friends would likely do the same thing. As you reach for another steamed green bean, your mother appears in a little devil suit on your right shoulder. She grabs hold of your earlobe, stuffs her head in your ear, and whispers, Remember you did that wonderful Polish accent in that Holocaust play in Portland. And don't forget that time you played the nice Manchester granny. Tell Meryl. 

Whisper, Shhhh. Offer your imaginary mother a steamed green bean to shut her up. She refuses the green bean and jabs you in the cheek with her pretend pitchfork. Go say hello. Introduce yourself. Shake your head vehemently. It would be terribly rude to barge into Meryl's inner circles, and besides, that is not what this day is about. This day is simply about the molecules. Meryl Streep Molecules are enough. It is a binary equation: yesterday, you had never been in the same room with Meryl Streep Molecules. Today, you have. This should be good enough for anyone.

Reach for a red grape, then realize that the hand that has just plucked a grape before yours belongs to Meryl Streep's willowy daughter, who is now tromping in her miraculous leather boots over to some equally willowy, chic friends. Realize that you would be disturbed if a stranger evidenced any excitement about eating a grape from the same cluster as one of your daughters. Look neutral. Back away from the grapes and Meryl Streep's daughter. Your imaginary mother yanks on a lock of your hair and sticks her head in your ear again. Go talk to her. Tell her you're a screenwriter! An actress! A playwright! Tell her you write a blog! She'll love the blog! 

Shake your head vigorously like a horse plagued by flies. Hiss, Knock it off, Ma. Imaginary mother sighs and takes off the devil costume. I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Your mother then leaps from your shoulder and disappears under the buffet table. You are running out of art to look at, and you have already said hi to the two people that you know. Decide that this is it for the afternoon. You have drunk your fill of Meryl Streep Molecules, and after one more gallery sweep, you will head back to your life of serfdom, with no regrets. This day will still have been better than the last.

Near the back of the gallery, you realize there are two graphite drawings that interest you—one of a deceased pigeon, and another that is a series of tiny, wonderful sketches of a twisted gum eraser. Inch closer. You like these drawings. You like them very much. Back in the carefree days when you were a happy, Birkenstocked Studio Art major, sculpture was not your thing, but drawing was. You have always been amazed by what the eye can see in dirt on paper,  and these drawings are right up your alley. Enjoy the drawings for a few minutes. Then decide that it really is time to go. There is no more for you here. The pigs are oinking for their slop, Serf.

Reluctantly head for the door at the end of the narrow exhibit hall. Glance to your right: another piece, three stones half-sunk in metal boxes submerged in red earth. Look around for its title: Stay. Someone jostles your arm suddenly, an expensive-looking man who has just walked away from a chat with Don Gummer, the same Don Gummer who is now standing right behind you. Don Gummer, Meryl Streep's husband, is a nice-looking fellow who looks like he would prefer to be wearing anything other than his tan tweed suit jacket. He is alone, no buffer in sight, and he looks as uncomfortable as you feel. 

Carpe the moment. Realize to your surprise that you actually have a question. Smile at him before you lose your nerve. He smiles slightly, wary but willing. Hear yourself say something like, I'm sure you're really tired of all the schmoozing but would it be all right if I asked you a question? It is far from verbal brilliance, but he has probably heard worse. He is amenable to entertaining your question. Try hard to speak slowly and rationally. Ask him if his focus is sculpture now, or if he still works occasionally in graphite and charcoal. It sounds all right coming out of your mouth, you decide. He opens his mouth to answer. He begins speaking, telling you that, yes, he does occasionally still work in—oh.

A blonde woman about your height is approaching on your left. She is talking on a cellphone: Yes, I know, I know. Hang on a minute, Daddy's right here, let me put him on.  She smiles apologetically at you and mouths the word sorry! as she hands the phone to her husband. He smiles apologetically at you, too, and takes the phone from her. He turns away, leaving you alone with Meryl Streep.  

Excuse me for interrupting, says Meryl Streep warmly. Didn't mean to break in like that. Carpe everything you can muster. In no time at all, she will again be surrounded by people, led back into the world of wine-swilling vassals. Quickly offer your hand. She takes it‚ takes it in hers. You are shaking Meryl Streep's hand. It reminds you of your mother's hand (the full-size version of your mother), soft and quite gentle. Marvel at how short she is, an inch or so shorter than you.

Do not say Hi. Hi or Hello would be far too normal, far too pragmatic. Say something in a breathless rush, something that really wastes time, something truly absurd that sounds like Would it be all right if I said hi to you?, even though you are already holding her hand, and the two of you should presumably already be beyond this point. She laughs. Graciously. This is graciousness, pure and simple. Already, people are closing in on her. You must be quick about embarrassing yourself. Hurry.

Realize what it is that you want to say. Realize you don't want anything from her, don't expect anything, don't need anything. Realize that what you want to say is thanks, no matter how forgettable this will be to her, no matter how silly this will seem to you in the morning. The words lurch forth. It's okay. Let them go, let them fall where they may. You mean well, you know you do. Hopefully she will hear it in your voice, even if she can't decipher the moist, muddled mess of your words.  Go for it.

Tell her that she must hear this all the time, but that you just want to say thank you, because she has been a genuine joy and a delight and an inspiration to you for a very long time, for as long as you can remember. She smiles politely, but she is distracted by the approaching persons, as are you. Do not do all the things that you must not do. So do only one of these things.

Say, I know it's ridiculous but you and I have the same birthday. Her eyes widen and she leans in. Really? she asks, interested and seemingly chuffed. June 22nd? Nod like a maniac. Don't hold back; surrender to the Stupid Side. You only live once. You may never again be standing next to grapes and rocks and pictures of dead pigeons while you chat with Meryl Streep.

Say, I was born the morning of your 21st birthday I know it's crazy but I always took it as a sign and it inspired me to become an actor. Now her husband is handing back the phone to her, and someone else is suddenly talking to her, overriding your silly, serfy words. The important person takes Meryl by the elbow and pulls her away. As she is being led off, she turns her head and casts you an apologetic glance. The conversation is over. You understand. You are okay with this, surprisingly okay. There are pigs to slop, but you will slop them more cheerfully now. Watch her go.

Meryl Streep says a few words into her cellphone, a word or two to her walking companion, then pauses. She turns. She takes two deliberate steps back to you. She smiles warmly. At you. Yes, you, in all of your ridiculous fangirl splendor and exploding Spanx.  She reaches for your left hand and squeezes it warmly. Again: Meryl Streep gives your hand a quick, friendly squeeze. She knows that your conversation ended abruptly, and she does not want to be rude. 

It is a lovely gesture. The loveliest.

And then, just like that, she is gone, whisked away by handlers, spun off into her world. She will not think of you on her way home tonight. She will probably take her shoes off in the car and ask her daughter about SAT prep and tease her husband about the shy, adorable way he held the microphone under his big rock. Meanwhile, you will be cleaning up casserole dishes of vegetable chili and chicken-and-orzo salad after the Parents' Night dinner at Sophie's preschool.

But you will be smiling. 

So like me, to fill a room
too full, to keep too many
useless things, to fear
pardoning the ghosts.

I pressed my hands against
the door. I shoved. I used
all my weight, as well as
the weight of all my wishing.

Then, love,
you came along and placed
your perfect paver's hand
on top of mine.

The door closed beneath my palm.
A quiet, solid click of the latch.
No slamming, no straining,
no groaning of the hinges,
no splintering of wood.

The door closed. 
The door stayed closed. 

And all at once there
was nothing more to do
but turn to meet the warmth
of your golden-sweet smile.

I have exactly one callus
to show for my prior efforts,
right at the base of my
left ring finger. 

I would show it to you,
but I don't want to let go
of your hand.

I know them before I
get there
I am always on the
slowest train to yes.

I know the yes places
will receive me as
well as I have mapped
them in my heart.

They always do.
Iceland, Wales, Scotland.
Germany, France, Japan.

There are, of course, 
others. How the thread
unwinds, tangles.

When I leave something
behind in a yes place—

a gold ring, a book,
a lover, say—

the yes places never mind.

They fold my lost things,
over and over, until they
disappear, until their shapes

no longer appear on
my heart's map and
I can trace each skyline
as I please.

It's wise to pack light,
the yes places say.
The dark will find you,
wherever you roam.
Latch the suitcase.
No need to bring
anything from home.

I sip my warmish coffee,
listening to the new year fumble tinnily
now with my battered blue postbox.
He might welcome some instruction.
He might welcome a welcome.

I might have welcomed these too, once.

In 2015 I might have dared to open the door.
I might have introduced myself, with my signature
head duck to a bob to a once-fetching tilt,
with the usual apology in my eyes
for the screen door's consolation prize:
yes, sorry, only this, only me,
only a woman of a certain age
(read: not his)
with wet eyes liquid soul wobbling breasts the yearning
sloshing onto the toes of his newly issued uniform shoes.

In 2015, I might have warned the new year that
the dogs will always bark. I might have counseled him
to leave the awkward pieces of mail on the
wide-hipped seats of the red plastic Adirondack chairs.
I might have told him not to fear his first day
(although how I hate the first day of anything)
and let him know that, sometimes, my daughters bake.

Now I refuse to open the door to him. Too soon.
It's nothing personal, newest new year.
He is welcome as far as my porch—as far as the doormat.
Let him, thumping, unseen 2016, deliver as he may.
What do I know, after all, about his job?
Let me, steely now, sit quietly. Let me offer no apology for being.

No year is at fault for what it delivers. No need to
shoot the messenger; no need to interfere.
What will come will come, never when expected,
and thus,
just as expected.

"You're kidding me, right?" I say.  "Of course I'm going to wear a sports bra. But I'm still going to look like this."

I jump up and down. I shimmy. I wiggle.  

She blanches, then shudders. Point made. 

"But you have a sports bra, right?" she presses. 

"I will wear two," I say.  

"I guess you already knew to wear a sports bra," she acquiesces. 

"I am 43," I say, "I do know when to wear a sports bra." 

***** 

I do not sleep well the night before the field hockey game. This is nothing new -- poor sleep is my calling card! my battle scar! my pride! -- but the day of the game is also a day for another goodbye.

By 43, I think, in addition to knowing the right brassiere for any occasion, I should know how to say goodbye. I should be able to say goodbye with conviction, without looking back. At least, I feel like I should be able to do this. But I am always looking back, hoping for one last glimpse, one more wave. No wonder my neck and spine hurt all the time. I ache with goodbyes. They twist me and contort me.

Stay the course, the grumbly voices say. They are never happy with me. Don't look back. For once in your life, don't look back. Jesus, you're pathetic.

This day -- the morning of the game -- I enter my therapist's waiting room, painted horrid yellow and anemic sage (what had he been thinking?). The wooden corner shelf where his ancient stereo used to sit is now bare. The absence of the stereo and its bland classical music knifes me in the gut, unexpectedly. When he opens the door to his office to greet me, I am already gulping back sobs.

"Your stereo," is what I manage, gesturing to the empty shelf. 

He nods sympathetically and welcomes me into his office for the last time. I have seen him for the past eight years. These have not been the best years, these eight. But he is my best safe place. He is the person who asked all the hard questions in a soft voice and remembered the answers. He is leaving on Saturday with his wife. They are headed for Mexico, daily farmers' markets, and blue waters.

"So I'm pretending that you're already dead and that a fairy granted me a wish to have just one more hour with you," I say.  

"That works," he says.  By now, he is used to my interesting coping skills.

"I also feel like I'm in a dinghy and you're in a dinghy. And we're in a big ocean with no land in sight. And the rope holding our little boats together is finally frayed to bits so the waves are going to take us off in different directions. And I have to remember really hard what you taught me about navigating my dinghy."

"I'm glad you put us both in dinghies," he says. 

"Well, if you had a ship, you'd have hauled me onboard a long time ago," I say. "It's just obvious. It has to be two dinghies."  

I ask him about Mexico and the RV. He says he's not going to have a home base for quite a while, he doesn't know how long.

I am suddenly crying again. "It must be amazing. To be your own home base, wherever you go. I want that someday." I really do. I want this more than anything. I don't know how to be my own home base, because there is a big hole in my heart where home base should be.

He nods. His eyes go red and shiny. He has faith in my crappy dinghy and my navigational skills, he really does, but he knows that home eludes me. He knows I'm going to need a little luck out there.

"You've worked so hard. Really hard," he says. "You did this work." 

"I did," I say. "I did something in here."  

I give him my favorite book. He gives me his favorite book. We did not plan this.  

We talk, we shoot the shit. I tell him that I am going to play in the parent-child field hockey game despite the fact that my reptile brain is telling me to slither back under my covers for several days because all is lost. All was lost before, but now extra all is lost.

There is nothing he can do for me now that he hasn't already. There is nothing I can do now, in our final minutes, that I haven't already.

All the work has already happened here, in this room that I will never see again.

We talk about the people who seem fine. There are so many of them. 

"I think," he says thoughtfully, "they are just talented socially." 

"They know how to keep busy, you mean. With other human beings." 

"Exactly," he says.  

I would like to keep busy with other human beings. He and I both know that I am afraid of most of them, which is a slight impediment to any chance I may ever have at normality. 

We fall silent. He is far too classy to turn to look at the time.

"I think it's time," I say, bravely. I am the captain of my own dinghy and the omnipresent clock says 1 o'clock, gallows hour.

"Thank you," he says, after a moment. "For just talking. I'm glad we had this hour to just talk." 

We stand. We hug, hard.

I leave pressing the book he's given me, "Loving Kindness," to my chest. I don't look back, this time.  Catch and release. It must always be catch and release.

***** 

My favorite word in the English language is the word "safe." 

I think it is a beautiful word. It stands its ground. It takes up just as much space as it needs, but no more. 

I did not grow up in a safe place.

My grumbly voices say, Don't say that, what will people think? 

I will stand my ground: I did not feel safe. My heart did not learn to discern safe from unsafe. I still do not often know what is good or true or right or real. I don't know what or whom to trust.

I was never held at gunpoint on my way to school. No one at home hit me or forgot to feed me. I had a warm house, meals, my own bed. But there were certain things that were not to be discussed. Sex, money, alcohol, the profound unhappiness of my parents' marriage and its ugly, chronic fallout -- these topics were off limits. Where I was every night until three or four o'clock in the morning -- only my younger brother dared ask me this. He would sit on the shaggy pink toilet lid, watching me with tears in his eyes as I lined my lashes in frosted blue and lied to him that I was fine, that the boys I knew treated me fine, that I couldn't be better.

We were swimming in secrets, the liveliest, funniest, wackiest family in town, with its living room cluttered with books and maracas and stray guitar picks and overflowing ashtrays. I assumed everyone grew up this way, fronting. I still cannot say much of those years without it feeling like betrayal. I can simply say that I did not want to know what I knew. I did not want to see what I saw. We were living a lie behind closed doors, like many families do, and we had the practiced, oversized smiles to prove it. I still have mine. We were fine.

I did not feel fine. I felt uneasy, most of the time. I still do. It is difficult for me to feel safe. I startle easily. Some very bad things happened once, more than once, and I can't unhappen them. There are words for this: PTSD, complicated grief. But the words don't do any good.

I stop breathing when I hear an angry voice. I am saying my diaphragm ceases its gentle, automatic in-and-out. They can do that, in case you didn't know. When I hear anger or feel it in the air, I freeze. I breathe from my throat up. The words leave me and I shut down and become unreachable -- even in the face of anger that is justified and measured, or anger that has nothing to do with me. I will run to the other side of the planet without taking a step, if you raise your voice. I am not thinking when I do this. It is a survival skill that no longer serves me well. I have outgrown it, but it has not outgrown me.

***** 

If you have been my friend for more than a few years, you are a person of kindness, patience, and persistence. And you are probably more than a little bit wily. You can put that on your resume.

 *****

I can't stop crying. I can't do another goodbye. I'm afraid my heart is going to harden into concrete, I text to the one whose own scars abrade mine. We love each other and we terrify each other and we love each other some more. He is 3000 miles away and no one can understand us because we can barely understand ourselves. 

Slow down, he says. Watch some TV or something and write me when you can think.

But it is the thinking that is the problem.

***** 

On the field, parents charge their offspring with wooden sticks. A very hard orange ball is in play. Our children do not back down. I am playing a thing called defense, which apparently means I am supposed to hang back and wait for things to get bad. This is my M.O., so I plan to be very good at it on the field in a nice professional setting.

But when my friend's blonde, blithe daughter drives the ball toward me with a psychotic gleam in her caged eyes, I realize that playing defense means that I am the one who confronts the offense. Going into the game, I thought the defense would talk it out nicely with the other defense before things got hairy, maybe share cookies, watch the offense beat each other up.

But no: here comes the long-limbed, blood-thirsty offense, straight for me. I find this suddenly very offensive. I chant oh no oh no oh no as she approaches. I spread my legs. I hop side to side. I keep my stick so low it sticks in the ground and Miss Blonde Offense sprints past me. Behind me, her mother the sweeper is wheezing with laughter.

Later in the game, when three lithe girls surround me and there are sticks jutting and snapping everywhere and I cannot get the ball which is right at my feet, I yell fuck fuck fuck. No one throws a yellow or a pink card or makes any strange arm gestures so I stay in the game.

The mothers on the field, having gone to great, saintly pains to keep these beautiful young women alive in our wombs -- almost ten months a player, that's a lot of months on the field. The mothers are in no great hurry to advance the ball. We listen to the coach. We keep our sticks down, way down. We love our daughters' eyeballs and teeth and spinal cords more than we love our own.

The fathers are a different story. They are brutes, ridiculously competitive. One man in casual business wear limps onto the field, insisting he can play. In five minutes, the coach subs him out. In another five minutes, he's begging to be let back onto the field.  All around our dear children, men are lunging with sticks, en garde! One wields his like a golf club, mid-swing. I want to yell YOUR SPERM HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THESE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, BE A LITTLE MORE CAREFUL WITH YOUR JIZZ, MEN.

But I have already yelled fuck fuck fuck so I keep my defending mouth shut and roll my eyes. A ball finally, blessedly comes my way, unaccompanied by mouthguarded gazelles or frothing middle-aged men. I do the smart defending thing: I skip to the lou, straight to it, and as I am about to urge it very nicely to go elsewhere, away from our goal, I am suddenly slammed from behind by what I can only guess in that moment is a Sub-Zero refrigerator shot out of a local Civil War cannon. 

My feet go up. I am a minus sign, a sports hyphen, a field hockey em dash. I am very proud of myself in the split second that I hover horizontal in the air. Then gravity intervenes and I thunk to the ground, which is also playing offense.

"Sorry!" yells the dad who has barreled me over.  I am one with the earth. I ask the earth if I can move my neck. The earth says yes, so I get up gingerly. I cannot breathe, but as I have mentioned before, I can go like that for days. I am sure my lungs are around somewhere, maybe near the goal.

"You okay, Jenn?" calls the coach, now possibly second-guessing her decision to put this many rabid man-children on a field with fine-boned daughters and slow-moving mothers.

I am not exactly okay. I am not exactly not okay, either.  

I can walk. So I remove my baseball cap and thwack the offending bull-man hard, several times. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY TEAM, I yell, thwacking his jacked-up, XY-chromosomed pecs.  THWACK THWACK THWACK.

"I know, I know, I'm really sorry," he says, "I was just going for it." 

I keep playing. Because if I don't, I will have to stop moving. I will have to sit down, and I will have to remember this morning's goodbye. I will remember the hole in my chest. I will remember all the things I am playing this game to forget. 

I play almost the whole game. The coach only takes me out once, for a little while, then sends me back in for the limping dad who shouldn't have been playing in the first place. I yell PUT ME IN, COACH after she has already put me in. I don't want to miss the opportunity. It feels good, even if the timing is wrong. 

My daughter scores the final goal, winning it for our offspring: 2-1. I drink all my water.  

"I wasn't that bad, right?" I ask her. 

"Um, you were pretty bad," she says. "But not, you know, the worst." 

"What are you talking about?" I say. "I GOT RUN OVER BY A BEAST. I got up. I kept going. I even hit the ball in the right direction a few times. And I wore sporty tights LIKE A BOSS." 

She squints at me, her impossibility. "Yeah, you weren't bad. You were all right." 

 "The dads were insane," I say, in defense of my defense.

"Yeah," she agrees, shaking her head. "They get, like, crazy." 

But she is safe and happy. Everyone is safe. Safe enough. Maybe that's the best any of us can hope for, really.

***** 

Later that night, when I stand up, my uterus yelps. My lungs have returned to their proper place, but my uterus is being decidedly weird.

I text my friend the sweeper, whose former husband was the one who sacked me: I THINK YOUR EX-HUSBAND DISLODGED MY IUD. 

BEST TEXT EVER, she writes back.

***** 

At bedtime, I pray for sleep to be kind. I pray that my dreams stay dreams. I pray for all the usual things: to not let me fuck up my children too badly, to learn how to lose gracefully, to say goodbye to the right people and not goodbye to the wrong ones. I pray for loving kindness, given and received. I pray that my IUD is still in place. I pray for home. I pray to know someday that I am safe. I pray for what my therapist used to call "discernment." I pray that I will not always sleep alone.

But I am still leaking words. 

I watched some bad TV, I write to the faraway one.  And these are the words that took shape.

When I can write no more, I press send and tug the silver chain on the bedside lamp. In the dark, the violent, lonely dark, I abandon prayer. Tonight requires old-school coping, the big guns: wishing, pretending, a bit of time travel -- 20 years back, or 10 years forward, the usual. I want to take it all back and give it all back. I pull the quilts up over my ears. I curl into a comma, becoming my own pause for the night. This is safe enough. This will have to do, for now.

I was undaunted. I could get by without it.
You knew, in this dream. 
And you loved me back 
(the difference = everything - nothing).

You would continue living in a city that 
neither of us has ever called home  
and I would--
well, who knows what I would do?

You helped pack my car as she feigned
disappointment over my departure,
so soon!

I'd brought too much, as I always do.
The lone snowshoe scraped my knuckle
as your warm palm slipped under mine,
our hands hidden in the bungee'd
detritus of the car roof. You smiled and I 
gladly stopped breathing. Didn't need it,
not anymore, useless breath.

(the difference = everything - nothing)

I knew and you knew.
There was comfort in that, finally.
Sea shell, snowshoe and circumstance 
be damned.

A dog skull does the trick, this afternoon. I'm cured. 

The dog no bigger than a large cat leaps onto the couch into the same space and at the same moment I am reaching for--what? Who knows now. The puppy's small dense skull collides with my left eye socket. She is unscathed (the whole fucking world, even a dog, knows how to shake itself off and walk away untouched--pain is remarkably optional for many) but I reel from the impact.

The pain is a fresh pain, at least, something new. That triggers the tears I've been holding at bay for days. I press the heel of my hand to my brow, sobbing furiously and instantly. The pain as an isolated moment is not the issue. It's a dogpile of pain that won't let up, accompanied by self-commentary so vicious, I would drive a knife into the eye of anyone who spoke to my daughters in the same way. 

To call it self-commentary is not quite fair. I suspect none of this is fair, although depression likes to tell me it's absolutely fair, that I deserve every sadness, every letdown, every unkindness, every bounced check, every lost love, every drop of bad luck I get. Depression is a monster I swallowed in my sleep, and it's doing the talking now. It's not quite me, the voice, but it's been around so long that I don't remember my own.

I was not always like this, not even close. I was not always this person. I had happy stretches, a mostly normal existence, highs and lows. I loved good people; they loved me back.

That's what makes the now almost unbearable at times: I remember contentment, but I can't touch it anymore. It won't come when I call.

The beast tells me daily that I am beyond hope, have always been beyond hope, am a fuck-up beyond redemption. It tells me I am destined to be lonely and alone, while all around me friends and acquaintances and strangers stay married--or divorce but immediately remarry. Everyone's fine, everyone's marrying their best friend, everyone just knew, isn't that something, isn't it amazing, how life works. 

Who could bear you? is what the depression likes to ask me. Who the fuck do you think you are, to think anyone could love you for very long? That anyone would remember you, want you back?

My twice-yearly life insurance premium surprises me in the mail. I think my ex-husband is still the beneficiary, because of the kids. I suppose I should ask. What do I say? I don't want you to be my beneficiary if I'm not your beneficiary. It's absurd. I hope we are going beneficiary steady, still. Beneficiary. Such a polite, cheerful word: bene, bene!  

According to the premium, my life is worth $250,000--did I decide this, once? When? What value would I give it now?

I cannot imagine someone paying a quarter of a million dollars for this life. The joke's on them, I suppose. I should try to enjoy that. 

I'm better in a relationship. But it's got to be a good one, a steady one, and they're hard to come by. Try leaving a relationship that you suspect is hurting more than it's helping--this infuriates depression. Who do you think you are, to expect any more than this?    The voice is savage--so what if his anger made you sick? You're already sick, you sick fuck.

Asking for help is more excruciating than remaining silent. This feature of depression ensures that the sufferer will succumb to the disease eventually. I wake up dully thinking that it is winning, it will always win, that it is just a matter of time. 

I'm not sure why it kills some people when others don't even know what it is. 

There's no one story for depression, as far as I can tell. Me: I was raised to keep the brilliant smile lit when anyone was watching. No one's fault, everyone was just doing what they'd learned. I did it all through my teen years, which were marred by date rape, sexual abuse. I equated smiling with surviving. No one knew a damn thing was wrong, or if they did, they didn't ask. 

I smile a lot. I have smiled for years. It is my way. If smiling while sad were an Olympic event, you know who would medal? This woman. I'm funny, too, when I need to be, or think I need to be.

I smile, I'm funny, and I have no idea how to ask you for help. I could not ask for help when my babies were born, a perfectly reasonable time to ask for help. Maybe the most reasonable time, outside of a death, to ask for help. No one brought casseroles; I never made it onto a list like that. Secretly I cried, feeling like a freak. I don't give off the right vibe. I have never mastered it. But I want your lasagna. I really do.

Depression fucks with friendship, with the ability to admit to nearby souls that the tank is empty. In my case, the worse it gets, the quieter I get, because the self-disgust is too massive a burden to share. The fear of being defined as The Depressed One is overwhelming. So pain and desperation reads as distance. It would take a visible crisis for the brave to come forth with scalloped potatoes and lemon bars. I sometimes wish to God to swap the depression for cancer. Then I say, fuck you, you don't exist anyway, forget I asked, that was a weak moment.

There are better times than others, when the stars and the drugs (ah, the fucking drugs, enough to down a baby rhino) and the dollars and the good souls all align. Then the smiles come easy and real. I remember what I like about myself, what I like to do. I just can't count on those times to stick around for long. So excuse me if I seem wary of you or anything you've offered. I know to count blessings fast and then let go. It's better if I let go on my own, rather than let the depression pry the good from my hands. It leaves claw marks like you wouldn't believe.

It's down to resources, now. If I seem like a crap friend to you, I am sorry. You probably shouldn't be my friend if you feel that way. I'm totally on your side. It's just this: I am very careful with what energy I have left. And there's not much left, right now, here in 2013.

My fight goes to the girls. I can't say I'm really fighting anymore when it comes to myself. Nothing has paid off, and I've lost every fight I cared about, except my kids. They're not half bad, those two.

Am I breathing, still? Sure, but what a shit way to define winning. This is not living as I'd like to live, or as you'd like to live, by the way. 

I get up in the morning because of my kids, period. I fight for the girls and the joy I have in relation to them. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. That's the only thing I continue to care about. Only: what a scary word. But there's no exaggeration there. I feel numb in all other regards. Hope is the dead thing with feathers. I hate the word now. It catches in my throat. I shake my head when I hear it. I think it's cruel--as cruel as the concept of God, which I formally relinquished to a dog skull at 3:14pm EST this afternoon.

My daughters know who I am, the real deal, for better or for worse. They know what this depression means. They have seen it up close, and they are brave. They have a mother who struggles clumsily and mightily to love them well. They see the tricks my mind plays on me. They know it could happen to them. I hate that it could happen to them. I won't even look at the stats. I see how it played out in my family. Checkmate.

I wonder what sacrifice I could make, to appease the shitty depression gods, persuade them to leave my children alone. But like I said, I'm not buying into gods anymore. Beasts and monsters, yes; gods, no.

This is my way of saying I could really use a lasagna from you right now. Or a baked chicken. This is an awful summer, and as of 3:14pm, there was no God, either. 

Will she be able to write back? Will your $19.95 entitle you to even a handful of the monosyllabic responses you have come to enjoy so very much at home? No, no, it will not. You will receive nothing, but then again, you are the mother of a tween girl, so this is good practice. Look on the bright side. She is not here, at least, to enjoy your growls of frustration from behind her slammed door. 

Now that you have paid your ransom money, write some reverse ransom notes. Use the opportunity wisely. Make your child think she wants to come home. Be cool. Be creative. Assume the persona of the funny, adorable mother you always knew you would be, and were shocked to discover you are not. Confuse the child with your great good humor and copious quips. When she returns to you, her actual, haggard, overanxious, "dream-crushing" mother, the shock to her system will be so great, she may not talk back for weeks. So buy yourself some time. Think of that $19.95 as a mental health investment.

Read the following actual examples for inspiration. Going too far is not enough. She is a tween, after all. They read only of dystopian universes and pride themselves on their ability to handle, you know, like, whatever. Fly your parental freak flag as high as it will go, and then attach a string and turn it into a wacko kite. If she ever comes back around from the dark side of the tween moon, sometime in her early 30s when she is weeping and dripping snot over her own colicky newborn, this will give you both something to laugh about. Although let's face it: you will already secretly be laughing, because you are a terrible person like that.

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: Jennifer Mattern AKA MOM OF GREAT WEIRDNESS

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 12:50AM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 12 2013 10:11AM

My dearest Sophie Bean, 

Forgive the delay in receiving weird bunk notes. I first had to jump through the flaming hoops of bureaucracy that the evil organization "WE HAVE YOUR CHILDREN AND YOU CAN'T TALK TO THEM UNLESS YOU GIVE US A CREDIT CARD NUMBER" AKA Bunk Notes insisted upon. Don't get me wrong, kid. Sure, I love you. But I cannot believe I have to pay $19.95 for unlimited access to my child WHO CANNOT RESPOND EVEN IF SHE IS BEING HELD CUFFED TO WHATEVER YOU CALL THE MIDDLE POLE OF A TIPI AND WANTS HER MOMMY.

Good thing I bought the unlimited package because this darn text box is telling me I am running out of room.

I stinking miss you, and I want to hug you ... I just can't wait to hug you and your sis again. THAT IS, IF BUNK NOTE VILLAINS DON'T FIRST FIND A WAY TO CHARGE FOR THAT TOO. "Would you like to send a sudoku that your child will NEVER DO, or would you like to hug her? HA! HA! DUMB MOM! YOU'LL NEVER SEE THE CHILD AGAIN! WOKASHON IS A DEATH TRAP! BUT FOR $5000, MAYBE WE CAN FREE SOPHIE FOR ONE LAST HUG!" 

I just hit "enter" twice, but the villains claim that is using up two more of my precious lines. I shake my fist at the sky! Who can keep you from me, you, my precious firstborn, who equally confounds and amazes me and makes my heart melt? BUNK NOTES, YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS, IN THE END. 

Two more lines. Because I like to live dangerously and have a neat grouping of paragraphs. Some habits die hard, my sweet. Two more. I am reckless. I love you. I miss you. I will now start in on another BunkNote. Hopefully I can jam their servers and bring them down forever. Which might suck for poor lonely campers. BUT THIS IS REVOLUTION, I TELL YOU! SOMEONE MUST FIGH--saoieurojawe;lkjtrl!@#!@$$!!

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: Sophie's Conspiracy Theorist Mother

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 12:58AM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 12 2013 10:11AM

Dear Honey, 

I find it worrisome that they placed you in Wokashon, which is obviously a training camp for Wookees, or woks, or Wookees who like cooking with woks. It seems unfair to burden you with Chewbacca-type roommates cooking with too much soy sauce due to its unavailability in outer space. I can only imagine how terrible the tipi smells. If there is a tipi? Does your Hector Lodge assignment mean your Wookee campmates were too big-boned for tipis? Is Hector Lodge actually a sad high-rise culinary school for Wookee girls? I can only assume it was your father's dyslexia when he was filling out the camp forms. Instead of "Sophie" he most likely wrote "My child is a Wookee who is interested in cooking." Don't blame him, dear, he does the best he can. For years he called me Refinnej, and I hated to correct him. Men and their tender hearts. 

Anyhow, I am sure you are making the best of Wookee Wok Shoe Shine camp. I'm sure they're telling you very nice politically correct stories about the very peaceful Native American-Canadians who used to rule the roost there and greet everyone with poutine and tickets to the Calgary Stampede. None of that is true. I mean, come on. "Wokashon." That is some Star Wars planet for sure. Well, or "Wokashon" could also be a town in Wisconsin. I think it rhymes with "Chaka Khan," and she's a very nice singer, so. I guess what I am saying is this: as long as the girl Wookees are nice and working hard on their personal hygiene, I see no reason to call the camp and complain about your placement. In fact, maybe you will have very fond memories indeed of the Wookee girls who befriended you this summer, and taught you to cook without splattering Tauntaun oil all over your Jawa-print apron. 

You are such a positive young lady, why, you'll have those Wookees singing and playing ukelele in no time, forgetting all about their woks. And their shons. Whatever those are. 

I love you, Sophie Bean. More in a bit. 

xoxoxoxoxox 

Mommy-shon the wok-less

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: The Loins From Whicheth Sophie Was Borneth

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 1:07AM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 12 2013 10:11AM

Dear Love, 

Watch as I try to write a letter that sounds more like the usual letter-from-Mom fare, circa 1950.

How are you, my dear? How are your knees healing? Did Daddy buy you good hiking shoes and sneakers? Did you remember your flip-flops? HAVE YOU BEEN BITTEN BY A RABID GRIZZLY OR STUNG BY THE WORLD'S FIRST CANADIAN SNOW SCORPION? 

Okay, now that that's out of the way...let's gossip. How's your dad's side of the family? Did Grandpa try to give you a flu shot? Resist, resist.

Did I mention I love you beyond all words and comprehension and interpretive dance? I could try to sing my love to you while doing a Wookee wok dance around a fire, naked and jiggling, wearing pretend Wookee fur, but that would be so offensive to your bunkmates, almost as offensive as my Bruno Mars drawing. I doubt I could fully convey my primal maternal love for you anyway, my brave warrior firstborn. You are magic to me. 

I love you, Pookie Bean. Don't let them cook you. Or even floss their teeth with your hair, no matter how cute it may seem at first.

xo Mom 

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: MOM OF SOPHIE THE QUIXOTIC

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 1:16AM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 12 2013 10:11AM

Oh, my sweet darling daughter. By now you are surely sunburned, wrecked with five kinds of skin cancer and foot fungus, plagued by several interspecies Wookee romances and the angst that arrives forthwith, and may have lost your front teeth in a spatula accident. Camp can be so fraught with peril. 

Just know I will still love you even if you come home missing several limbs and your nose. It will just Build More Character! And think of the money you will make from writing the memoir. 

Now about this Bananaskin thing. It's dreadful that a dyslexic soul was allowed to make such decisions. Because, clearly, there is no such word as KANANASKIN, and THEY MEANT BANANASKIN. In fact, the whole camp is supposed to be on a tropical island like Lost, but all of Canada is inbred and dyslexic (be kind, they cannot help their genes) so they decided to find a place in the woods called "CANADA SKIN." Which did not exist, and so they walked interminable hours in the hot Banff (again, with the spelling!) sun, finally stumbling to a suitable-enough place while slurring their words through parched swollen tongues: "KANANANANANANASKKKINNN." And then Wookees flew down in Millennium Falcons, and well, you know the rest, I'm sad to say.

On a brighter note, I am feeling quite adventurous and look forward to tasting your Wookee wok recipes. As long as YOU ARE NOT AN INGREDIENT. Be safe. Be wary. Your smooth white skin would make a yummy won-ton wrapper to a hungry Wookee. Be tough and make Chewbacca noises like you mean it. One can never be too safe. I love you, my devilish, brilliant angel. Write me in smoke signals. Friendly Wookees have big lungs and can help blow the words in my direction. Thinking of you all the time. When I'm not dealing drugs or beating stray kittens.

xoxoxoxo

Mom

*****

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: YO YO JENNY LOVES SOPHIE

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 1:29AM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 12 2013 10:11AM

Dear Sophie, 

Tonight I watched old reruns of So You Think You Can Dance. And now I really think I can dance.

I made a hip-hop routine with a little Afro jazz thrown in for artistic measure, and I think I should really take it on the road, make something more of myself. 

But first maybe I should test it out on your friends at school in the fall. 

Is your hair still purple? Is your heart still conflicted about whether your parents are the best or the worst parents in the world? We are both things. One less thing for you to worry about. 

I miss you. The house smells like animal pee, but I'm sure your tipi smells just like home, so, hey, you're probably sleeping like a champ. I am going to start pretending it's the neighbors coming by at night and peeing on our property. I like that illusion better than the reality of our incontinent but well-meaning animals. 

Who's your best Wookee friend? Tell her MmmmrRARRRWWWWWREEERREEEE! for me. She'll love that! 

Well, pookie, cheap-arse Bunk Notes tells me I am running out of lines again. GEE, BUNK NOTES, HOW ABOUT, OH, I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE MAKING BIGGER TEXT BOXES FOR LITERATE FAMILIES??? Goodness. Mommy is cranky tonight. I shall take my leave, but know I love you and can't WAIT to hear all about it. 

xoxoxoxoxo Mamacita

*****

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: Mom and Queen of Jungle

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 3:58PM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 13 2013 10:06AM

Dear Honeypie, 

Your report card came today. You might want to start doing mind control on yourself for a change instead of your little sister, to improve concentration and responsibility. You can even hire me to swing a steampunk-looking pendulum in front of your face and intone "YOU ARE VERY ORGANIZED AND VERY RESPECTFUL TO YOUR BEAUTIFUL MOTHER." I work for cheap. 

The house is so quiet when you guys are not here. I've taken to slamming doors on myself and shoving myself out of the way at the bathroom sink mirror. "MOVE." "No, YOU move." "I have to curl my eyelashes." "Well, I have to brush my teeth." "You're dumb." "You're loserly." It helps a little. 

I miss you and I want to know all about the land of the Wookeeeeeeeees. 

Wah. That's me whining. 

Love you, pookie. Wear actual sunscreen. Don't believe the Wookees if they tell you buffalo dung will do the trick.

xoxoxoxox Mamacita

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: The Righteous and Honorable Mother of Sophie Bean

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 12 2013 4:02PM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 13 2013 10:06AM

Dear Sophie, 

Here's a crappy Sudoku that Bunk Notes recommended that I send you. 

I think the answer is 5. 

Love, 

Mom

***** 

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: Mom Is Not a Stripper, Heavens No, Who Told You That

to: Sophie Lanedate: Jul 12 2013 4:10PM

This Bunk Note was retrieved by camp on Jul 13 2013 10:06AM

Dear Sweetheart Sophie, 

Your odd cat, Carlita, is currently kneading and nursing my upper arm again into tiny raised teats. She seems certain it will yield milk. I try not to think about it too much, or it's a little disturbing when we make eye contact. 

Are you deep-sea diving in submarines that you and the Wookees made during Crafts? Are you solving global warming using only Rice Krispie treats and fossilized cow poo? Are you skinning live wolves and shooting baby deer for sport? THIS IS MY WAY OF SAYING I WANT VERY MUCH TO HAVE A TWO-WAY CONVERSATION. Dang it!

By the way, do not skin wolves or baby deer. They are nice and soft and good. 

Did you see Emma yet, or is that after next week? WHY AM I STILL BOTHERING TO ASK ANY QUESTIONS? 

I picture the guy who runs Bunk Notes looking exactly like Grue from Despicable Me. 

All the animals say hi. Babci says hi. My tummy is grumbling so I think that means it says hi too. 

Seriously, Carlita just shredded my poor arm out of love. Love sometimes really does hurt. Ow. 

I love you so much. So proud of you and all your adventures. Wear a helmet. Even to the dining hall. YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO SAFE. 

xoxoxo 

Ma

*****

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: The White Queen of Northadamsia

to: Sophie Lane date: Jul 13 2013 8:13PM

This Bunk Note has not yet been retrieved by camp.

Dearest Love Muffin Pookie Cheeks of My Soulful Complex Heart, 

Hey, have a colorful Bunk Notes border!

This is the dumbest BunkNotes border ever. Aliens and showgirls and koi fish in primary colors. WHAT THE FROG. I. Can't. Take. This. Company. Anymore. 

It's hurting your eyes, isn't it? Just looking at this doo-doo. Let's sue them when you get home. Practice looking confused and blinded. "The Bunk Note borders...were just...so...so...UGLY! They HURT me, Mommy!" 

How's Wookee Wok Camp? I hope you've mastered the art of Jabba the Hutt Filet Mignon Medallions and Boba Fett Sweetbreads. I hope someone is taking pictures of you and your dear Wookee bunkmates. I bet by now you've all become quite close. I picture you all singing and roaring around the campfire, French-braiding each other's long animalistic fur or shiny purple-sheened brunette hair. It really is a darling image. 

I miss you. It's boring without you. Work, pick up dog pee and poo, work some more, watch Mad Men and The Newsroom, avoid the phone, eat cold pizza, work some more, pick up more dog pee and poo, pick up a cat hairball, sleep. I know, I know. I'm just making you homesick. 

What else? Oh, I love you, and I love you, and there was something else...wait, oh...I love you. Be well, beautiful firstborn. Wash your face and brush your teeth, dear, even if the Wookees frown upon such things.

xoxoxoxoxoxo Mom

*****

bunk: HECTOR LODGE - KANANASKIN - Wokashon

from: Helga and Fifi von Matternhausen, and Bob

to: Sophie Lane

date: Jul 13 2013 8:24PM

This Bunk Note has not yet been retrieved by camp.

Dear Sophie,

Here is a dumb old vocabulary builder that Bunk Notes said you would like to receive. Because, really, nothing says LOVE FROM MOM like a forced vocabulary builder in a Bunk Note. Are these people on crack? Shh. Don't read that out loud to the Wookees. They like crack too much and it's not good for them.

But seriously. Vocabulary builders? "What did your mom write?" "Oh, she told me that PSEUDAPOSTLE means FALSE APOSTLE, and if I didn't memorize it I would never see my friends again." 

BUNK NOTES!!!! YOU ARE THE PSEUDAPOSTLES!!!!!! 

Actually, The Pseudapostles is not a bad name for a creepy book. 

Well, lovey, it's 5pm there, so you and the Wookees are crafting dinner in your handmade elk skin woks. I like imagining what you're doing at various hours of the day. What are some of your friends' names? Chewbaccarina seems, well, too obvious. Margewccawitz. That sounds like a nice Wookee girl name. Tell Margewccawitz that I also send my love, and she is welcome to visit as long as she wears a loincloth when we go to MASS MoCA. 

Hi. You're pretty. You must get that from your mother. I hear she is a raven-haired green-eyed Celtic-Polish beauty of great legend and mystery, with massive mandala boobs that the Ancients had prophesized. 

I hope none of the Wookees eats you before you get to see Emma again. Don't tell them about Emma, actually. It may make them jealous, and I have seen all three Star Wars (the ones that were GOOD) and you DO NOT want to make a Wookee jealous. 

Going to hack into Wookee Camp Website now and see if I can download or upload or middle-load any stray pictures of you.

I love you,

Mom

To think I might have touched your face.
I still don't know what bravery means to you.

There are still a few tales left and they want you to hear them again.
Look, I wouldn't bother you, but they're making quite a mess in there.
I've had to send away countless decent pairs of shoes, useless lingerie,
the ex-husband's good wool sweaters, to make room for the stories
still looking for a home. It's temporary, I tell them, and they snicker.
They have me, and they know it. Please I understand I try to be strong.
I tell them they can't stay here forever, or I'll be a goner for sure. It's one
thing to think that yourself; it's another thing entirely to hear it from the
midnight stories whispering like tissue paper behind the closet door--
the husband's closet, with its homemade tie rack, wouldn't you know.

They have nowhere to go and we both know they won't make it long
on the street, naive as they are. They think they know better, so I hush
them to bed every night and cry them lullabies that make them laugh.
To them, they've got the answers, if only we'd take them for a good
long walk, let them once again do the talking. I don't tell them that I've
seen other stories die, I don't tell them it's inevitable, that blood will run.

For now, let them rest. I know what comes first to you and I love you
for it. I may come last, now, or not at all. Give me a new story to work
with, something to know in my bones. I am dying of these old stories
climbing closet rods like devils, believing they are still true. Send me
today's news, take the temperature of that old heart of yours, scribble it
and send it, no penalty. If you never think of me, think of me long enough
to tell me this, to keep the closet devils at bay, to subdue them. If you
do think of me, tell me, because I die a little, now, in the mornings.

I won't come for you; we are too old for such fervor now. I am only
trying to save this funny life of mine. Was there a cuckoo in the clock?
Or had I imagined nothing, in that sweet time that was once?
My friend, my once love, I wouldn't ask if I didn't need this so badly.
But I need a fresh story, the doorknobs rattle.

Let me know if it is story number one (as we discussed)
or unexpected story number two (as we did not discuss)
or if it is story number three, hand pressed to heart still, and that old story
should be allowed to remain. If so, I will press it beautifully in a book
of poems I won't dare to send to you. Maybe all the other old stories
will finally give me some peace at night, let this ragged heart rest.

I am still that necessary fool, you know. I have given up on the giving up,
but don't let that trouble you. But if you prefer the lie I can say, no,
I would not wait 40 more years, who would wait that long for someone?
After all, plenty of fish in the sea, no one is that special.

How did I do? Don't fear it. I laugh at myself.

If anything, simply take it as what it is, what I always say: your beauty
stayed. My God, to be remembered, to be remembered, the way I
remember you? I am saying take it: carve it into your softest skin, know you
mattered like that once, to a woman who finally lost her stomach for the stuff,
her knack for all in and all yours and meant to be. I won't pretend that
this heart wants anyone or anything else. But help me, just help me,
change in my cup, every little bit helps, as they say.

A new story from time to time, to evict the old and rancorous.
Set my closet free, let my heart be what it has always been,
when it comes to you. That's not changing, and what of it? A good woman
can only do so much with a stubborn heart and closetful of old stories.

To love, to last, to see the beauty in you that you never did--
there are worse tales in this world, trust me.

Here's what you'll do if you know
what's good for you. Wreath the star
(you've already forgotten which, I know)
also with scraps of worn leather from a
baseball you once cared about
(everyone's had one).

Add the few photographs that we
never bothered to take. Embroider
my name (if you remember it, on
any random Tuesday), and light it
all on fire. Astronomers will have
something to talk about (the sky!)
and as usual we will have nothing,
nothing at all, because you no 
longer remember the Parisienne
cupcake girl, her borrowed lace
and her bull-headed ways and
the words that made a sliver of
velvet vetiver sense at the time.
Candles dripped, stripped a room of
unpleasantries and logic. No one's
fault. You'd remember if you could
only remember.

Here's what I'll do if I know 
what's good for me: I'll turn my
back on the unlit fire overhead
that should have been. I'll leave it
to the astronomers to sort out the
funny detritus of the ringed star.
Space litter, breaking up and apart,
startling someone, somewhere
in a thousand years when rose petals
and fossilized cowhide float with dead
beetles and desperate frogs in a
too-blue pool.

"Oh dear," she says. "I wish you had inherited more of my genes when it came to this stuff." 

"No," I say, "I don't want to pathologize this. I'm just asking you, woman to woman, do you feel rage? Like, ever?" 

She thinks as she shirrs the fabric onto the rod. "Regret, maybe, sometimes. But rage--" 

"NO," I say. "Not what you feel toward you. What you feel toward other people. After so many years of people-pleasing." 

"These also come in the 72" and the 63"," she points out helpfully. "I really like the fabric." 

"Mom, seriously."

"I am serious. I don't know. Rage? I don't think so."

"Because I am feeling some rage these days," I say. "I am downright ornery." 

She raises one eyebrow, amused. "Oh, you're definitely ornery. I think it's hormones. Like with Sophie." 

 "Or," I counter, "it's just that I'm tired of making nice. I'm tired of pretending that other people's problems constitute emergency action on my part. I've been envisioning FIERY PITS--"

She looks up and squints at me, shaking her head. "Fiery pits." 

 "Not hallucinations. Like, just...I am cordoning off fiery pit areas in my brain, and they are filling up with people I have just had it with."

 "Fiery pits. Uh-huh. Can you reach that bracket?"

 "Yes." I fiddle with the bracket. "But Mom. Really. My mental fiery pits? They are filling up with people. And I am sort of amazed at my level of rage. It's growing, not waning."

 "Jennifer," she clucks, shaking her head again. "You can either let it eat you alive, or...you know...it's just bad for you. Careful with the bracket. You have to pop it back on, see? It's got two--"

"I see," I say. "But what if this rage is a necessary shift? I don't think it has to be bad. I think it's maybe just long-repressed anger. Maybe it's just a phase. And it's not like I OWN a fiery pit or anything. I mean, I know who would be the first in and the last to leave, and mentally, I really enjoy shoving them face-first into the flames, but I think, you know...this could all be part of the healing process. You know?" 

"Uh-huh." 

Your kid hunches over to
show my kid her fat. She 
grabs a fistful of belly,
wants my kid to see it.

Your kid hates my kid,
most of the time. 
She hates her and laughs
at her and fears her and wants
something from her--
but who can say what that is?
Can you help me understand?

So-and-so wanted to go all the way
with that kid in our class,
my kid says to me. 

Did she? I ask.
Can't it all just be talk?
People talk, after all. It's sad, how much
people talk about other people.
We can't ever guess at another kid's life.

My kid shrugs. She can't make sense
of it. She doesn't speak the language
of sixth-grade girl. She doesn't like
the way it sounds, the harsh bleating,
the hissing and telegram stops.
She has other things on her mind.
For now, at least.

Look, I don't know what my kid
says to your kid. I'm sure there
have been some doozies. Your kid,
she won't even look me in the face
anymore. I don't know why. I want to
fix it, but I can't. I don't want to go back
to the summer before seventh grade,
all Duran Duran and biting electric razors
in pastel clam shells.

What should we women be
saying to each other? 
What should we be saying
to our daughters?

I'm fresh out of new ideas. Every day
I scratch her surface with a coin.
I never win. No three-in-a-row,
not even a two-liter bottle of Pepsi.
Another day, another lottery ticket
discarded. I can't tell you how much
money I've lost, trying to bust her code.

Something's not quite right here. 

You really should have seen them,
the way they were. Resting side
by side, parallel parked on the scorch
of asphalt desert stretching lost
behind the defunct community stage.

With my luck as it pertains to you and
you alone in our one-strike world,
they'd have been long gone by the 
time I led you to see. Two birds or one?
I know what you'd say, as I always do--

my pointless rubber-band snapping of
the dead air between the synapses still
promised off to you, you and your gentle
eyes, you in your village garb--

you, the tailor's grandson who dared
to take my shepherdess hand when no
one was looking.

The dead cows and the soiled embroidery
and the stale sesame bagels never got
the message: the time for dowries is
long past. They wait at the ready, still, in
a carved alder box in a damp earth
cellar, because some love knows nothing
but wait and love and wait.

You'd probably like me to set the rest
of the scene, keep things moving. Yes, I can
be so tedious this way, building skyscraper
word towers on my red Xs, wherever I'd like
take your hand and climb to that different
view. Just once I'd like to break the curse,
offer you the last live calf, a bright blue
stitched bow around its neck, a fresh bagel
in its soft sweet mouth.

Never mind. I will talk to you now about
hard hot asphalt: someone's fault,
that untraceable variety that worsens migraines.
 
Point your finger all you like, but you walk on it too,
away from your car and its invisible emissions, 
nocturnal and otherwise, clouds of Renaissance 
onion breath, the breath you'd wished you'd 
saved once in this very lot. I know better than 
to ask you if you remember.

I chased you across this black Sahara into
the red room full of artist-idiots and idiot artists,
fat tears mortifying my own idiotic flesh better than 
any hair shirt from the Martyr Gap. 

Listen, although you will not, but goddamn it,
I would be pleased to be wrong once: 

Always Dear, I maintain I had a point, still do.
I will forever work night shifts as the maintenance man
of what we were, mopping up the burst garbage bags
neither of us saw coming, unclogging the the corner toilet 
full of shit and piss and blood and breastmilk and semen
and puke, sorting and tagging the leftovers of the
grotesque and gorgeous art of our once-shared life.
It's a crap job and nobody's got to do it, except there
are these women who will ask someday what I found.

I like to have a few answers when I can. I'd like to
tell the women it's amazing, what you find in the stinking
bins, in the slick drains, when everyone else has gone home.
Why, just this week I've found an expression of yours on
the face of a child--

the tailor's grandson risen from the dead
of the wretched urinal floor,
flown up into her eyes,
blessing everything she said to me,
every word that knew nothing and never would.

​Sophie, my firstborn, you were four pounds at birth. The doctors were solemn about your prognosis. We were warned that you might be developmentally delayed or lack gross motor skills. You do fall a lot, but I blame it mostly on your footwear. You are long and lanky and curvy and floppy and sweaty and funny and clever and sometimes lazy and sometimes stubborn and always creative and miraculously healthy, despite having had more X-rays in your short life span than some professional athletes have had in the span of their careers.

​We lost your twin, because whoever your twin might have been, she was smart as the dickens, like you, and said NO WAY AM I GOING TO SHARE THE SPOTLIGHT WITH THAT ONE. I'LL JUST BE A GUARDIAN ANGEL.

​Sophie, my obstinate love, my stunning songstress, my wise grumpy owlet, my messy disheveled emo-Goth-uke girl, you tell me I do not tell you often enough that you are awesome.

YOU ARE AWESOME.​

This is the truth, and if I don't say it enough, it's because somebody has to occasionally do the dirty work around here of reminding you to wash your face and drink enough water and stop talking about PERFECT PITCH ALREADY or I will stick Lea Michele on your tiny tushie. ​

I am the Bad Cop, I know. Daddy is the Good Cop. You will be grateful for both of us someday, although my cop role is currently more annoying. I am the Bad Cop out of love, and out of the need to be your Caroline Ingalls (who was not a cop, I know, I am mixing metaphors, which is also annoying, but at least I am not going to say I AM LITERALLY CAROLINE INGALLS because that would be so much more annoying).​

I give you a hard time because God doesn't give a gift like you to a mother like me just to have me let you sit behind a closed door learning ukelele from YouTube videos. It is my job to air out your room and help you find your voice, both figuratively and literally, and yes, I used them right, because I learned all that stuff before you imbedded in my uterine wall. ​

You are a beauty, a wise-acre, a dystopian novelist, a songbird, a bean, and my baby bear. I would shred flesh or take a bullet for you, because your story deserves to be as long as you can make it.

But I reserve the right to cry over your baby pictures forever, and to wish for a granddaughter who is a spunkypants sassymouth moxieface just like you. I also hope you have many years of perky boobs, and that you think of me on the day they start to sag. I will be there, with you, in that moment, wherever I am, and I will be smiling.​

Here. Look at you. Look at your perfectness. Look at your pigtails. My God, this is what it is to be alive, this is what it is to know the blessing of a daughter like you. I will always do your hair, if ever you want me to. I will always help you sort out your heart and soul, if ever you want me to. Just say the world.​ See what I did there? I meant to say world.

You and I almost didn't make it through your birth, thanks to two crummy awful scary things, preeclampsia and the liver-killer HELLP syndrome. But we did, and your eyes have never changed. You have always been you, peering at me with your skeptical eyes, like REALLY, THIS IS THE BEST YOU PEOPLE CAN DO?

I love you for this, for your old soul, even if it makes you a little cocky sometimes. You may have a few lifetimes on me, it's true. Remember to stay humble, and keep listening. Even young souls have things to teach you.​

You are beautiful and though it feels nice to hear someone else say it, get in the habit of telling yourself you're beautiful, and notice how much nicer it is to hear when it comes from yourself. That's the secret, kid. Well, one of them. I can't dole them out all at once; that's not in my contract.​

I love you beyond the parameters of the word love. I BIG BANG LOVE YOU, and it stretches out east, west, north, south, and all the 3D options of Big Bangs, too.​

Speaking of Big Bangs, I had them in the 1980s. I cannot recommend them to you, particularly as your hair is thick and wavy and God only knows what would go down.​

Be good. Be kind. Be of service. Listen more than you speak -- you'll look smarter and become wiser that way. Keep others' secrets. Keep your own secrets. Push yourself to be bolder and brighter. Make sure you have enough graph paper. Don't forget to solve today's problems, and not just the future problems of this big bad wonderful world. Get your hands and face and knees dirty. Travel. Learn how to say thank you, in every language that you can. Make your sister your maid of honor, and she won't disappoint you. She is your best friend in the making, even if you can't see it yet.​

​Above all, surprise yourself. That's the best gift you can give to yourself, and the best part is? It never gets old.

​Oh my, do I ever love you, Sophie Bean.

Happy 12th, my blessing, my miracle, my wry angel. I am here, and I will always be here, even when I am not here. Just look for the roses.​

I love you,​

Mom

​

​

She is with us, surely, we know it and we don't.
This home is her domain and the grandfather clock
will hear no other opinions on the matter.
She is somewhere nearby, in another room,
tending to what needs tending,
smoothing a bedspread with practiced hand,
penning a thoughtful note,
blotting her lipstick as a lady should.

On this table of pancakes and bacon
(and love that cannot find its coat and hat)
an extraordinary bloom reaches into the air:
an orchid traced with lemon and violet.

He's dismayed by its presence.
Just look at it, who would ask for this?
This orchid says too much without saying
anything at all. There it is,
stealing focus from his pancakes,
towering over the jugs of syrup,
insistent in its message.

He hadn't asked for orchids.
More importantly to him,
neither had she.

This, you see, is grief.

When it arrives, the unwelcome guest, we
can only remember all that we did not want,
all that we never asked for.

Later in the hall their son plays host
as we study the old photographs
I have loved since I was a child.
My cousin touches one grown man's finger
to his parents' wedding picture, but
all I can see beside me is the boy
in the Davy Crockett hat, sitting on the floor
with the freckled cowgirl, his ever-sister.

I must remember to listen.

Here, says my cousin.
Look at my father's hand around her waist,
look at my mother's hand on his shoulder.

This, you see, is marriage.

Two people promising to go forth,
into the light or the dark,
without the benefit of sight.

Whatever comes will come.
Who can say what will be?

We--my cousins, my daughter and I--
search the photographs for the answers
we refuse to admit we are seeking.

Meanwhile, the always-groom stays
in the dining room with his thoughts,
his pancakes, and that blasted orchid.
He cannot deny its beauty, but his heart
has no place today for any beauty but hers.

In almost all of the photos, his gaze is fixed
on her, his beloved bride, woman of class and
wit and good breeding.

Nobility does in fact oblige, as it turns out.

His favorite pastime was never golf or painting--
but rather choosing her again and again,
wherever they went, wherever they were. 

His greatest pleasure in this life has always been
studying the landscape and finding her there:
his fine-boned bookworm beauty with the pert nose,
great gams, and spark-blue eyes that missed nothing.

Together they had a knack for making the best
of the cruelest kind of worst. 

These last two weeks she'd been full of gratitude,
he said, thanking him for every last thing,
putting her hand to his cheek.

This, you see, is grace.

When the orchid is long gone, this is what will remain:
his beloved's hand on his cheek,
the smile meant only for him,
the beauty never gone, just gone on ahead,
lighting the way for him as sure as the sun
shining on their morning paper.

--for Margaret "Peggy" Ward Fredericksen, who will be dearly missed

You want the ones who will fall in love with her to stay in love
with her, to fight for her even when she fights for flight. You 
want her to settle for the more that comes with less, you want
her to know her limits and her hubris, you want her to become
the lawyer, the astronomer, the doctor. You want her to save
herself long before she ever needs to, with statutes and numbers
and microscopes and insurance forms. Let all the beauty come
as a surprise, you think. Let her unlearn expectation. Let her be
washed clean as bone, stripped bare and bright, again and again.

"There you go, boy," I said. "There you go."​

*****​

Lady Isabella grows longer and longer. At 17 weeks, she is an Edward Gorey dog, a Tim Burton creation, all points and lines and slashes of motion. She is very food-focused, which is good, because I am not above bribing for love. She does not love me yet, but she loves my warmth and the taste of mushy treat residue on my fingers. In time she may love me as well, but I place no bets.

​*****

My great-aunt (well, something cousin something removed -- my father's first cousin) passed away, after an extraordinary life of resilience and loving partnership with her husband of many, many years. He's asked me to say something at her memorial service. I am tongue-tied already. She can see me now, I think. What can I say, about a life so well lived? What can I say now, believing as I do that she can see this life of mine?

I ask her to please look away. I am doing the best I can, even if it doesn't look like much.

She was the last keeper of the family secrets on my father's side.

I need a proper dress.

*****​

Fanny the Red is always seeking me out, wanting to make eye contact, to commune. I get exasperated with her anxious behavior.​

Then I think: what if she's just an outward reflection of my own anxiety? What would happen to her if I became blithe and carefree -- careless even? Would she be an entirely new dog?​

*****​

So I still have these children.​

*****​

I am thinking about propane. I cannot make it through another winter. Heating this house with oil has me in debt. But propane: I think of mobile homes, families charred to a crisp in the middle of the night. I do not know if this is an accurate line of thinking.​

*****​

I have very few answers.​

*****​

My money-saving culinary experiment worked this week. The girls were with their father. So I did not buy any groceries. I lived off whatever was left in the dark recesses of the cupboard and fridge. Split pea soup that gave me heartburn, but filled my belly. Lentil soup, a bit watery, but serviceable. Chickpea curry with wilted Brussels sprouts.​ Sticky rice pudding, made in the crockpot. Gordon Ramsay would not be impressed, but I got by -- high fives to me.

*****​

The dreams, ah, the dreams! How relentless they are. Some of you would be flattered to know how often I meet you when I am asleep. ​Some of you are nicer there than you are in real life. 

*****​

The gutter pipe attached to the front porch is no longer fully attached. I fear it will come loose in the middle of the night and smash the windshield of my car. I tried to pull it down when my car was safely parked elsewhere, but I couldn't manage it alone. Pine tree broken and folded in backyard, gutter pipe (which rhymes with guttersnipe) ready to jump to its death, and a roof ready to give out.​

"I need a home equity loan," I said to the bank lady. "I can't fix things without it."​

"You don't qualify for a home equity loan," she said sadly.

"But I pay my mortgage," I said. "There's money in the house. I hear people do this all the time."​

"Yes, but you're not those people."​

"What people am I?" I wanted to ask, but didn't.​ I was already on my way to the car, hunched, shoulders up about my ears. I think there are people who cannot imagine that they could ask, and not receive.

*****​

​I have ptosis, just like Paris Hilton. I will always have Paris.

​*****

I believe Moe the cat is actually a familiar. He looks at me with such love, comes when I call, curls like a baby in my arm, belly-up. He seems to be waiting for my spellcraft, my bidding. He is eager to help. I like that in a mammal.​

*****​

I work some. I write some. I watch Battlestar Galactica. Every day, I make myself throw out one more useless item. At this rate, I will be on the cover of Architectural Digest in no time at all, which is to say, no time would be long enough. They will interview me exactly never about my empowering minimalist style and ​profound use of different shades of white.

​

​

You know I can't,
he says, sounding more stern
than he'd planned, not that
he'd planned for any of this,
any of this at all. He wears
the uniform, matter of habit.
No one can say he's not
playing his part.

She knows better than to ask.
He's been gone plenty long
enough for a girl to forget.
The railroad track that runs just
behind the house is anyone's
path to travel. She tries not
to remember him years ago,
skipping stones on the rails.
Helped him think,
he'd said then, his hands
cupping hers around just
the right stone, smoother
than it had any right to be.

Here. Hold it like this, 
he'd said then. 
The railroad ties, they're just
like waves if you think about it.
But she couldn't skip the stone 
on the tracks. It's all about 
the timing, he'd said.
He could be practical like that.
You've got to know when to let go.

She holds her tongue now, daring him
to skip a word or three off her ribs,
her spine. For her it takes everything
to say nothing at all.

He squints and shades his eyes
with a shaky hand. The sunlight
and her eyes have always been
too bright for him. She knows it
but there's no telling the sun.

You look nice, 
he says finally. 
I don't want you to think--

But that's all. Train whistle.
They both have to laugh. He 
feels lighter, coil in his step
as he turns away. He thinks
he's said his piece.

When she opens her eyes
assaulted by the fierce and dirty
city sunlight, the scream of sirens
and purpose four stories below,
she finds her hand unclasped,
resting palm down on
her very own heart.

Turns out she's been wearing her
battered, torn snowboots to class
for two months, maybe three.
She's been wearing them
all the time, whatever the weather.

When you ask her why
she didn't tell you sooner
that she had no shoes, she says
I know we don't have enough money this month.

But shoes, you sputter. Shoes.
Don't feel bad about needing shoes.
You can't ever feel bad about
needing shoes.

But of course she can. And she does.
She has seen you skip dinner.
She has slept in your bed when
the oil tank was empty.

She doesn't want to talk about it.
You wish you could wrap
your arms around her bony shoulders
and take it all back.

Too bad you don't know anymore
what that all would be, the magic
all that would change everything.
You need the all that will fill what's
empty and empty what's too full.

I get that from you, she says. 
The not-asking, she means.
I don't always know how to ask for help.

She glances at you, untangling
your expression. You, her confounding
comical cross, her absurd blessing,

you who eat, breathe and sleep worry,
you with more frets than her yellow ukelele.

She leans in my bedroom doorway wrapped in a bath towel. Damp and pale and shining, she has just emerged from what she would call an "epical" (epic + magical) shower, where she's been singing for 45 minutes.

"No," I reply. "Not crying. I just...you sound beautiful. How blessed am I? My whole life, I get to be your mom, and I get to hear you sing. Wherever and whenever. In the shows you're in, in the shower, in the car, on vacation. I am so blessed that I get a lifetime of listening to your voice. I feel so lucky. Very grateful."

She smiles an unexpectedly shy and proud smile, looking younger than her almost-twelve years. For a second I see her first-grade self, loving me back without the poker face of the day.

"Thank you," she says, simply, without a trace of irony. This is music, too.

A friend asked me today: "She's almost 12?"

"For three years, she's been almost 12," I told him.

He nodded. "The key is this: take nothing personally. She'll come back around again someday."

"I want to believe that. She's mostly on the dark side of the moon now, and I'm ground control, holding my breath that she'll get back safe and sound."

"She will," he said.

"Oh, God," I said. "I hope."

*****

I am not generally a fan of hope.

But if

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

I may get lucky with her, after all.

(Thanks to Emily Dickinson)

What do you remember, above all?

Is your mind so clean, your memories so crisp, you've made yourself a bed you dare not sleep in?

As your skin wrinkles, let your life wrinkle too. Let it droop, hang, pull where it shouldn't. Take on the mud, every chance you get. Sully yourself. That way, there may just be something original to remember—something, until you came along and stepped in it, that had never been noticed, never been witnessed. Pure is only the state before experience, nothing more. Purity is incubation. Get dirty. Set the stain. Don't try to scrub it out. Let it be.

You were nothing when you were pure, and you knew it. Now: wish to be spoiled, ruined further. Yearn for the smeared chocolate, the spilled wine, the paper-cut blood spotting the surface of the warmed milk. Gather the filthy, affectionate mongrel into your arms. Beg for the wettest kiss, awkward and wrong, teeth and tongues battling without shame.

—Feb 2011

Dear, the flannel sheets have been keeping me warm. I never should have bought the cheap purple sheets. Coarse, not to mention completely nonabsorbent for my 2 am nightmare sweats. I am sticking with flannel for now. I think you would approve, but again, it's hard for me to know. You really must get in touch if you want me to know what kind of sheets you like best.

Dear, I am doing my darndest to explain the big hole in my chest where my heart used to be. This does not go over well, in general. I may stop trying to explain, because all it does is worry others. But I like to think you would understand. I'm trying to grow it back, but a heart doesn't grow as fast as hair or fingernails. Even plucked eyebrows grow back at a faster rate, and that's really saying something.

Dear, I miss you most on the couch at night. I watch documentaries about plane crashes and submarine disasters and cocky young men rolling like pigs in the mud to earn the right to become Green Berets. I would like very much to watch my programs with you beside me. I would not even mind if you teased me about my peculiar TV-watching habits, because it would just mean you had been paying attention. We could watch whatever you like too. I don't mind. I just want to put my head in your lap. I want to hear you say, Oh, that guy, or What is he thinking, sleeping on a special opps mission like that?

Dear, I would like for you to fix the toilet and unclog the shower drain. I would also appreciate some help with the back porch purge, in the spring. I would love to hear you say, A fence? That's easy, I can do that myself, don't worry. And then come home one muddy April day to find you digging fence post holes in the backyard. Dear, if you looked up from that task to see me smiling at you, and you smiled back? I think my heart would burst, to think that you knew what you were doing, and that you knew what you were doing for me, and believed easily in my gratitude.

Dear, I studied gender roles at the college I loved, of course I did. Upon further life study I still wish to cook your favorite meals and bake you a pie and mend your shirts and tend to our social calendar and the thank-you notes and the chickens we do not have yet, because we are not a we.

Dear, it's quite possible you will never get this letter. I can't hold that against you. It's possible you have written me reams of letters that I will never see. Wherever you are, I wish you could know that you are not forgotten, not a bit. I wish you knew that someone out there believes that you could build a fence happily and without grudge. I am not perfect, but I am not averse to trying to be, once in a while.

Dear, it is true that I groan when people brag of celebrating their wedding anniversaries on Carnival cruises or at Sandals Bora Bora. I am not above eye-rolling. But, Dear, Chicago is always playing in the supermarket, and you know what that can do to a person who's lost something she can't replace. A person like that takes an hour to find the Mrs. Dash, then starts bawling when she hears "Hard To Say I'm Sorry," and has to pull it together before she can even think of finding diced tomatoes or frozen 2-for-1 bags of shrimp.

Dear, I wish you were here, even though I don't know who you are. Maybe we've met. Maybe you've met my sheets. Maybe we haven't met and will never meet. If the fencing company takes Mastercard, the dark smudge where my heart used to be will lighten some in time. But I'd rather fetch you a beer and watch you wiggle the fence posts into the ground. Don't worry (not that you would, because you're not like that), I will make it up to you, however you like. I'm good that way, and there's not much you couldn't ask for.

Dear, there is one thing. A threesome would be out of the question. I never want to see your face contort with desire for anyone else. I don't need to see that, the way one really doesn't need to see a nuclear mushroom cloud, or a puppy being run over by a car. I have my limits. But all good women do.

Dear, the blizzard is coming. I don't mind the cold and I don't mind the shoveling. I do mind that there are hundreds of coupled-off souls who can tear the grocery list in half and meet back at the register to get home before the snow starts, and that you and I are not those people.

Dear, I apologize if I know you, but I cannot recognize you. Of course, you should apologize too, if you have become unrecognizable. It is the saddest of sad things, when people can't recognize each other. I know, times are tough. Thinking does not come easily. I am choking on old memories and expired wishes and need to get a drink of water and clear my throat.

Dear, here comes the snow. Stay warm. You are loved. You have always been loved. Wish you were here, whoever you are, whoever you've been.

Just get up. Be your own Nurse Ratchet. Scowl at yourself as you brush your teeth and inspect your swollen eyes and puffy skin. You were an unconventional beauty once—a nose too wide for film, bottom teeth too crowded for closeups, but your bright eyes and lithe and lively body and crisp clean fetching gestures drew in the audience, seduced it, when they didn't see it coming. Perfect for the stage. Yes, you did all right, once upon a time.

Nurse Ratchet stabs you in the left buttock with a syringe. Only kidding, she says. It's empty. Get moving.

The puppy is wide awake in her pen downstairs, hopping in place and crying. Hello hello hello oh you it's you do you see me because I see you!

Make sweet reassuring sounds as you let Red Dog out back. Find your coffee entourage: spoon, mug, Splenda, cream, Caffe Verona K-cup. Switch the Keurig on. It lows like what you think a narwhal would sound like. While it moos and futzes, release the hound.

Bella is wiggly happiness, eager to play. She is stretching into a wholly new creature. Legs, lengthening comically. Snout, elongating. She adores Red Dog, and for a second, you worry that she likes Red Dog more than she likes you. They do play for hours, salivating into each other's mouths. That's a tough act to follow. You usually prefer a few movie dates first.

Sit on the couch and sip your coffee. Get up and fiddle with the thermostat, always broken. The house finally gets its orders, begins cranking and pipes are clanking—you are suddenly on a ship, a ship that's going nowhere. Well, at least it will be warm. You hope.

You sip your coffee and burrow under a cover and watch the four animals—two feline, two canine—play. Watch them, they let you watch them. They are perfectly lovely creatures.

They are so lovely, you want to die. You really, really want to die. They are all you have this week, and they have each other more than you have them to count on. Something's got to give today, or you will die of grief. You will take a deep breath and step into the abyss, the abyss no one is supposed to talk about. You have pills, razors, the usual. Not great to have around, but there you are. At least you don't have a belt.

Get up. Get dressed. Don't expect to do a crackin' job. Just a modicum of hygiene, some acceptable footwear.

Get away from the house. Find a reason. A bag of Senior Dog Food, left behind from Sir James's passing. Yes, you think, you can donate it to a local animal shelter. People do things like this.

Drive to the shelter, which is the poor-man's shelter, not the fancier, well-funded Humane Society. This is the rougher side of animal rescue town. They seem confused by your offering.

It's a donation, you say. My old dog died.

I'm so sorry, they say.

I know, you say. Do you have a dog that might need some cuddling? Like, a dog who might need a little socialization today? Somebody in need?

The staff has to think about it. Some of the dogs haven't had their rabies shots yet. You can't touch them.

Oh, you say. You wait.

I guess you could hang out with Marshal, says one woman. Are you good with pitties? she says.

You are good with big strong pit bulls, yes.

She sizes you up, then fetches Marshal, a tan and cream handsome big boy, maybe Am Staffie. He's had a hard life of abuse.

She ushers you and Marshal into the visitation room, which is more like a jail cell for conjugal visits, with a stained futon couch and concrete walls and floors.

You rub his velvet ears, massage his thick muscled neck. His paws are itchy and he bites at them: likely an allergy, poor fella. He's a beauty. Tell him so. Say a little prayer over him that he'll be one of the lucky ones. He closes his eyes beside you on the futon, in no hurry to go back to his kennel. Who can blame him?

Say, I'm so sorry, buddy. It shouldn't be this way. I'll get the word out about you.

He doesn't answer. He lives in the present. I'm here now, I will surely go. Very little stays the same, least of all, people.

Well, you've done it now.
Wait and see if He's heard you.
Make a pledge. The lightning rod

on the roof and your tin heart
are His for target practice,
if He's got nothing better
to do this afternoon.

Bare your teeth.
Brace yourself.
That rumble you hear 
is not your belly, not this time. 

No one is bothered by the King's
missing feet--least of all, the King.

Things are on the up and up.
He, not shaped for sportive tricks,
has been reshaped: grand new visage 
unveiled on national telly.

Plump cheeks, wiry eyebrows, the hint
of a smile, a visage no longer rudely stamp'd. 
What dead nephews? 

It doesn't look like the face of a tyrant.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't, 
says Philippa Langley,
member of the Richard III Society.
He's very handsome.
It's like you could just talk to him,
have a conversation with him right now.

A wig, glass eyes, an enthralled audience:
Richard the III at last courts an amorous
LCD looking-glass and fan-club nymphs.

Love's majesty has finally come to His Majesty.
The dogs have gone silent. It is 2013. They yawn
and wait for breakfast to descend.

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent well after his time
into a breathing world, scarce half made up,
well met by loyalists of the future:
the king has never had it so good.

Philippa Langley is not wrong.
I could quite talk to him,
Daughter of York as I am.
I study his curved spine.
I mourn his feet.

His glass eyes regard me well.
White rose recognizes white rose.
He studies my furrowed brow,
no glorious summer here.

Go back to bed with your old wounds,
he decrees. Do as I have. Bide your time.
Someone will remember you. Someone
is sure to come looking. Sleep now.
Give them time to assemble the calvary.
In a few centuries or so you will have
the story you always wanted, and who
will be the wiser?

You only wanted me / the way you wanted me
the song goes, the song I am tired of singing,
of hearing before I am even awake. I could
sing into the empty dark wood box, I could
fill it with what is true. But you don't want one
more thing taking up space, one more thing
with no meaning, one more thing that's no use,
no use at all to you. What good is there in that?

I am shooting the shit with my therapist.

Which is to say, I am half-weeping, half-ranting on his couch. I haven't cried in here for weeks, so I am annoyed with myself.

He hands me the tissue box. Dumb tissue box.

Speaking of dumb, I tell him the dumb things I have done. Then I tell him the smart things I have done, to counter the dumb things.

I am a little surprised to hear he thinks the dumb things I did were smart. And that he thinks the smart things I did were maybe a little dumb.

Seriously? I say. Are you high?

I'm just saying, he says. When you express yourself, remember your audience.

REMEMBER MY AUDIENCE? I yell, incredulous.

He looks mildly taken aback.

What do we talk about in here? When exactly have I ever STOPPED remembering my fucking audience? BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THAT. I've spent 42 years trying to please the fucking audience of the day. I AM TIRED OF REMEMBERING MY FUCKING AUDIENCE. I deserve a Lifetime Achievement Award for Remembering My Fucking Audience. My audience can go fuck itself. 

He considers this. We have known each other for a long time.

Touche, he says, smiling.

*****

IT GOES LIKE THIS [OUR CONVERSATIONS KNITTED TOGETHER]

So the tree's finally down? 

Yes, Mom.

But you still didn't put together the table for Hannah's room? That's a shame.

Oh my God. I did. With G and N.

Oh. Well, I didn't know that. Did you clean the litter boxes?

I'm getting to it.

You really need to do that.

I know, Mom.

I joined an outreach committee. Thirteen weeks of touring different volunteer opportunities, learning more.

Uh-huh. That's great. I'm going to learn how to bottle-feed orphaned baby squirrels.

They have all kinds of groups. Bipolar Support Groups, you name it.

Uh-huh.

You should go.

Yeah, except I've now gathered enough evidence to prove that I am not the crazy one in my ecosystem. I am going to take Skittles instead of my meds until the rest of the world gets its fucking act together and mans up.

Wait. You're taking your medicine, right?

Yes, which is a brave and selfless act, because the fact that I take medicine and talk about it means that people who are crazier than I am get to feel incredibly pompous and awesome about themselves for not taking medicine. And don't even get me started on Claire Danes in Homeland. One green pill every five days. PUH-LEASE.

What?

Claire Danes.

I couldn't get into that show. I couldn't understand why she'd be interested in him. Terrorist or not, he's just not that exciting. He's not my type.

I know what you mean. Very unappealing terrorist.

His coloring, bleh. There's just nothing about him.

I hear you.

Did you put the Christmas ornaments away in the basement?

Not yet, Mom.

You really need to do that.

Mom, I think I am doing great.

Well.

Considering this month sucks ass so bad, and I am pissed off at the sun for continuing its bullshit rising and setting? I THINK I AM DOING A GREAT JOB, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

You didn't have to take in that dog, Jennifer. Maybe...

And you don't have to write fan fiction, Mom. But you do that, because it makes sense to you AND GIVES YOUR LIFE MEANING.

I'm just saying, the animals mean resources you don't have.

So let's pool our money and get a place together with a fenced yard and a grandma's apartment. You're paying too much rent. You know you are. Together we could get a much better, warmer place with plenty of room.

Oh, I could never live like that, Jennifer. With all those animals.

I could never live without them. They are the only thing that makes sense to me. Besides the girls. No, Sophie makes no sense. She's been twelve for three years. She confuses me.

Come on.

I like the clear social signals of dogs.

Yes, you've said this before, Jennifer. Are you sure you're taking your meds?

The human race could learn a lot from dogs and their social signals. They actually give warnings before attacking. That's classy. I admire a creature that growls several times before it lunges and shreds my jugular.

You just need to let things go. Do you talk to R about this? Letting things go? In therapy? Your feelings?

No, Mom. We say the rosary together. Of course we talk about this. We talk about everything. 

Well, I don't know. It seems like you're still very affected by your past.

Oh my God. OH MY GOD. Yes, apparently that happens TO SOME PEOPLE. Other people are born with the La La La Happy Face genome.

Did you delete that email? You should delete that awful woman's email. 

Nope. I'll save it, in case she pulls that shit again, so I can get a restraining order.

Well, I don't know. Maybe you should just delete it.

No way. I filed it in my PRAY FOR THESE FUCKERS folder, along with the psycho White Supremacist email from your third cousin.

Jennifer. Really.

Mom. Did he or did he not send me badly spelled racist email? And tell me if I like Muslims so much, maybe I should go live in Iraq?

No, he did. That side of the family, well. Oy.

The White Supremacist. Sounds like a pizza. We need three large White Supremacists. No dark meat.

What?

Never mind. I'm just talking to myself.

What did you mean on the Facebook? About hearing imaginary voices? They weren't, you know. Sitting on your bed with you.

No. I was just talking to myself again.

Oh. You talk to R about that during your sessions? About talking to yourself?

In between the lighting of the incense and the ringing of the bells.

Huh?

Never mind. Mom. Do you EVER get sad? Like, seriously. Sad. Angry.

I don't know. I guess I do all right.

Yup, I would have to say you do. I wish I were you. I really do.

I know. I wish that for you too.

*****

Disclaimer: My mother does not the creative license I have taken with this post and is Worried What People Will Think. So I will click "COMMENTS OFF" for this one. For the record, I love my mom very much, she loves me very much, and I really do wish I had her blithe DNA.

I catch her in the act of being unreasonably reasonable all the time. Right now, she is relaxing reasonably on her little round bed in front of the electric faux-woodstove. She seems to enjoy the flickering electric flames (as do I, as did Sir James) and the warmish if anemic blast of air emanating from the unit.

Despite her unfortunate puppy-mill pedigree and likely less than pleasant babyhood, Lady Isabella is calm, happy and seemingly well-adjusted. I keep waiting for her to reveal that she is Satan's canine spawn, or to keel over from a terrible genetic shortcoming caused by one of the incestuous matings in her family tree.

Instead, she sits prettily (and sometimes lies down) on command. She uses her litter box and Wee Wee pads and has fewer accidents than Fanny. She sleeps through the night. She has a healthy appetite, bright eyes, and a satiny coat. She listens to "No" and "UH-UH" and "Wait" and "Go potty" and "Get it" and "Drop it" and "No bite" and "Okay."

She is learning to speak Cat (and thus avoid Cat Wrath). She is now fluent in Big Dog. She wiggles on her back in the patches of sunlight that sometimes sneak into the house. She plays boldly with Fanny, who seems to enjoy her new companion's wiggly energy. She gets random attacks of Puppy Zoomies and runs in circles at 30mph. She wags her tail madly. She snuggles in laps. She barks only once in a while. She hops like a kangaroo, happily dragging her toys here and there, making sure Little Raccoon and Tiny Mouse and Baby Dog and Blue Rubber Dog all get equal quality time. She wears her sweater without complaint. She is downright sensible. She is a textbook, predictable Puppy, which makes her as rare as a unicorn. She has no business being so sensible.

*****

I am not bragging about my puppy; I am just confused by reasonable creatures. I never expect anyone or anything to be reasonable for very long, which certainly says more about me than about anyone or anything else. That was a reasonable disclaimer.

It has been a difficult 2013 so far. I am afraid to leave the house again. I can't find solace in sunshine or sleep. Joe Cocker is always singing a love song at the supermarket (totally unreasonable). The pharmacies have run out of doxycycline (completely unreasonable) so my face is breaking out terribly (unreasonable, at this age). My hair is a dry, stripey mix of ancient highlights and ashy, graying roots (unreasonable, unseasonable). I cannot speak about my breasts or thighs or checking account or kitchen floor or dubious future without losing my religion and my composure (reasonable, possibly).

Several people would like to talk to me. I have no idea what to say to them. I don't want to say anything until I know what I want to say (reasonable? unreasonable?).

There are exactly three people that I want to talk to. Two of them are dead, and one of them is pretending that I am dead. I think all three are being unreasonable. Especially the decomposing ones.

To save myself from taking one of the house's crawlspaces up on its name and praying for the end of the world to come around again, I spend my hours working, writing, pinning beautiful, unobtainable things on Pinterest, and meditating on this odd small being who has now claimed Sir James's place by the faux fire. I wonder when Lady Isabella will chew my face off, or maim my children, or call me terrible names on Facebook, or gossip savagely about me behind my back in the supermarket, while Joe Cocker croons to Jennifer Warnes overhead.

I no longer know if any of my thoughts are reasonable. This is not a good place to be. It seems reasonable to recognize this, but there you go.

*****

You are ridiculously reasonable, I tell her. Knock it off. I can't get rid of you if you stay this reasonable.

She cocks her head to the side, studying my face, listening for her name.

Bella, I say. She sits up very straight, watching me intently.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Knowing your name. Caring if I'm talking.

She yawns. Her yawn slays me, a massive stretch of a tiny mouth, sounding her utterly adorable YURP.

I love you, I say, realizing I have not told her this before.

I'm sorry, I add. I've been afraid to fall in love with you. But I think I love you.

She blinks, slowly and kindly. I blink back, my eyes brimming with pesky human tears. In case you didn't read every dog book in your local library as a child, like I did, I will let you in on a secret: blinking is a dog-calming signal. Dogs blink to let other dogs know that everything is okay, that everything will be okay.

Thank you, I say to her.

*****

She is growing long and strong. Her snout is taking on that pointy greyhound look. Her button ears are morphing into sideways flags. About six pounds now, she will hit anywhere between eight and eighteen pounds when she's full grown. Bigger than a chihuahua or a pomeranian, but smaller than a big raccoon. Eleven to fourteen inches at the shoulders, if only I knew for sure where her shoulders were.

She loves to chew delicately on her "bully stick," which is apparently some part of a very unfortunate bull's penis. My daughters are particularly fascinated by the bully stick. They enjoy saying "bull penis." They are not allowed to say "sucks," "damn," "dang," or "freaking" in this household, but they get a pass on "bull penis." The bully stick has provided our family with a rare opportunity to discuss human vs. bull anatomy. I have explained that human males do not (to my knowledge) have rawhide chew bones in their wee-wees. But I am open-minded and admit that I have not seen everything. At least, I hope I have not seen everything, yet. I could use a few good surprises.

*****

I took the Christmas tree down yesterday. I packed up all the ornaments. As I was packing the ornaments (carefully, carefully), I caught Isabella in yet another reasonable act: going potty in her litter box, then sitting outside her pen very primly, to make sure I had noticed her good deed.

Oh, good girl, I said. Such a good girl!

It was at that moment that I dropped my favorite Christmas tree ornament, a gorgeous hot-pink glass icicle far older than I am.

For 42 years, I had managed to keep this ornament whole. In one brief instant of perfectly timed, wholly reasonable puppy-praise, I somehow let it slip from my fingers. It broke roughly in half. I waited for my heart to do the same.

Instead, I laughed.

I suppose I had it coming, I told Isabella. Maybe 42 years of holding my breath was enough.

Isabella blinked.

Thank you, I said again. Thank you very much.

Hello Pretty Girl,

Here I go again. Still using company stationery. One of these times I'll use something else and you'll wonder who is writing. Perhaps I better explain something right now. This is going to be a very poor letter. I'm in an awfully bad mood to-day. You didn't know I was moody, did you? Well I am. In fact I am probably the moodiest person you have ever met.

To-day I am disgusted with everything in and including life. Right now I don't give a damn whether I live or not. Now that I think of it, I believe I do want to live, at least long enough for another date with you! However I do feel blue and tired. Some of it, no doubt, is due to the weather, some if probably due to the rotten business we've been doing and some of it is just after effects of yesterday and last night. The operator here had some bad luck with his motorcycle. He tried to race with me. Well, he got his up to 100 M.P.H. and then I passed him. Unfortunately his bike couldn't take that much punishment. He burned up his pistons. (pistons are a vital part of the motor, without which no internal combustion engine will run).

Yesterday we took my bike (I should say Bud's, he's home on another furlough) and went to Wisconsin Rapids to get some repairs for his. Then we came back through Stevens Point, a trip of about 100 miles. It was darn windy and very hard riding so I was pretty tired. Last night I was going to go right home but at the last minute Screwy and I went out to Tornow's. (Mike and Eleanor and a couple of other girls were there. They didn't stay long though.) After a few drinks the conversation drifted around to you. Were your ears burning? They were! Its seems like he, Screwy, would like to take you out, and him only 19 or20. Would you rob the cradle? No. Well, I didn't think you would. Well, I convinced him that I would much rather have you go out with me than him. Then he started drinking to you and everything about you. We couldn't drink to Milt's girl friend (his phrase) with ordinary drinks so Norman Tornow built us some of his special whooperdoopers, and you know his specials! A grand time was had by all.

This morning I had some tomato juice and I would have felt good if I could only see! Wish you had been here. Maybe you could have helped me. I met a nurse on vacation out to the Lakes once that had the nicest little harmless looking pills for hangovers but they sure did the business.

Well, that's enough of this chatter. Let's talk about you. So I'm the first person you've ever written to while on duty? I like that. It certainly sounds good. Shall I say that you're the first person I've written to when I'm supposed to be working? Well much as I'd like to I cannot tell a lie. I've cheated on my good employer before.

Thanks a lot for the picture, have already mounted it in a place of honor in my album. Don't forget to send the rest. That one look awfully lonesome on that page alone. Next time you come up I'm going to take some more. What do you mean that one of you was pretty good. I thought it was darn good. So I always take good pictures. Thanks for the compliment. In knew they were always about the same but no one ever told me whether they were good or bad. By the way, I'd like to see the one excption.

Well for the mood I was in when I started this letter it's progressed pretty good. Maybe I should continue? You want me to. All right then I will. Anything to please you. I can't imagine why I should feel so much better now. It must be the thought of you. Aren't you flattered? You should be. Hope you can get up here again soon. I'm sure we'll have more fun than last time, that is if I still have a date.

Oh by the way my sister just came into the office. I've told her all about you and she wants to meet you, so Cathie, this is Joyce, Joyce this is Cathie. There now that you've met you can go ahead--

Hello Cathie,

I'm glad to know you and hope I can meet you in person soon. Milt has been telling me about you and I really would like to know you better now that we have met. Judging from your picture and what Milt has been telling me I think you would be a lot of fun (and you're about all he talks about when I come down here now).

Gee, I hope when you come down some time that we will be able to double date -- maybe a wiener roast or something?

Here comes Milt so I'll have to say 'bye now and let him carry on for the Behm family. Do you think I can trust him to uphold our honor in regard to writing good letters? If he doesn't, let me know and I'll promise it won't happen again. Will it, brother of mine?

So long,

Joyce

Here I am back again. Now that you've met my best looking sister (she's my only one) how do you like her? You do? Well that's good. She's a lot of fun. We're going out tonight after I get through. Don't know where but probably Tornow's.

Well, this manuscript is getting heavy so I better close. By the way, will you please tell me just how you spell your first name? On your compact it was started with a "K." You sign it with a "C." Now which is right. So long now,. See you soon. Tell Winkie "hello" from and Bob.

Love,

Milt

P.S. My family physician gave me some very good advice how to treat acute auricular ventricular girlitis. Am starting treatments as soon as possible.

In the dream you wrote I love you in the snow 
outside my house, a house that would be mine
only as long as I stayed asleep and held tightly to
this snow globe, watching to see what you'd do

but I can never just watch, we know that
thick fingers, no reception on my cell, couldn't
get to you (always your game) then found out
you were looking for me, showing bright rings to
others who were shocked to find you that way,
thinking of me like that. I cannot let you leave,
I need to know: the license plates, why so many?

I set down the snow globe. I climb inside.
My children ride horses as I try to find the quiet
spot, any quiet spot outside to call you, stubs for
fingers, I know I will never get to you, to ask all
I wanted to ask. A shining silver fish flops on a
wooden plank floor. A cat jumps to dispatch it,
all I feel is frustration, my time is up, I can not get
to you, I will never know, I will never know you,
I wake from the snow globe, still as ever, nothing
to show, no words in the snow, anywhere.

"That's what my great-great-grandfather would have looked like. He shot live pigeons. For sport."

"Okaaay."

"I found an article in a Pittsburgh newpaper from the turn of the century. He shot pigeons and apparently got into a few fights whenever he didn't like the outcome."

"So that's your great-great-grandfather?"

"No. It's just a picture of a random pigeon-shooter in the early 1900s."

"Why do you have a random picture of a guy shooting pigeons in the 1900s?"

"Have you learned nothing about your mother?"

It doesn't happen often but I still cry
when they walk away. If our paths cross.
I cry when it's time to say goodbye.
But there isn't a reason, not anymore.
They're imprinted on me, I'm saying.

Her defiantly ungreen, unbrown eyes
(she will not be defined)
swallow me, then spit me out.
She pities me. Then she forgets what
I have said because the sky is blue
and there are dresses.

I want my words back.
I want to be her.

I want to know how to forget.
I want to know
how to pity the stupid.

I have a need to be kind, kinder
to this thing called self. So I buy
meat, bloody and leaking,
the kind that has nowhere to go

in this thing called the fridge.
With it I buy packets of fairy
spices to add to the crockpot,
the spices that will take away

any memory of wrinkled snouts,
wry eyes, snuffling in the palm
of my own small hand. I cook
the meat that only my mother

would dream of making in this
thing called my house. It simmers
and scalds itself in a thin, oily
broth for six hours and six minutes.

There is no one to eat it with,
this sacrificed almost-pet. I cannot
explain to the shredded flesh on
my plate why I chose it, so I

share it with this stiff, deaf dog
with wolf enough in his veins. He
could not blow a house down. His
own breath is barely enough to budge

his own lungs, to nudge them to
continue their slow task of sustaining
a life slowly coming to a close. I stroke
him and think of my mother, sleeping

in a down-filled bed in the City of Lights,
giggling women outside of themselves,
going un-needed, unnamed for a week.
No one deserves cafe au lait and the

thing called Mona Lisa more than the
woman who frets when I tell her the
shadow figures are back again, human
and animal, dispassionate. I clean the

thing called the kitchen , then mount
the steep stairs (abandoning the creaky
wolf to his first-floor den) to the bathroom.
There, I think of my mother, and then,

my friend's mother, sweatpants in the
casket. I wept for her, for what will
come for us all, what comes always
when not enough has been said, for

it will never be said, not all of it, there
will always be the gristle, the flesh,
the heart that could not become word,
could not become more.

I brush my teeth. I wash my face and
when I am done, I lay my thing called
washrag (not washcloth, I am a fourth
generation Philadelphia girl) across

the faucet, haphazardly, black mascara
streaking the bleached, rough cloth.
I must be kind. I have cooked pork for
all the mothers who are not here.

I pick up the washrag and I fold it,
three times lengthwise, and lay it
gently across the faucet once more.
In the morning it will become the

thing called gift, a small kindness
on my own behalf. This is a start,
I think, a small start, despite the
dark flurries, despite the silence.